I picked up all three of Janine Cross‘ Dragon Temple Saga books from my local library.

Description of Touched by Venom:
Like her half-breed mother, young Zarq Darquel can’t always hold her tongue. A peasant on a large dragon estate, she goes unnoticed by the Dragon Temple-until she captures the attention of a dragonmaster. Her clan is plunged into destitution, her sister Waivia sold into slavery, and her mother lost to madness. Desperate to find Waivia, Zarq and her delirious mother flee. Zarq then develops a taste for the highly addictive venom of the dragons she has been taught to revere-and with it, she imbibes their memories and a glimpse of a plot for social revolution. But to achieve it, she must defy not just sexual taboos and patriarchal society, but the Emperor who rules her nation.

Review:
Good lord, this one keeps you wanting. It’s beautifully written, seriously intense, harrowing, with amazing world-building and an admirable, strong heroine. But it moves at the speed of molasses. I mean, it’s slooooow.

Seriously, the first 50% of the book covers Zarq’s life as a 9-year-old. The next 40% is age 10-17 and a whole heck of a lot of hard living and sacrifice. The next 8% shows her coming to grips with her situation and in the last 2% something finally happens. Yep, all that social revolution stuff hinted at in the book blurb happens in the last pages…THE LAST PAGES…and then, and THEN holy hotcakes, Batman, it’s a big ol’, rage-inducing cliffhanger. Grrrr!!

I have all three books in this series and spent most of this book thinking I wouldn’t bother with the second and third. I mean, even though it really is an astonishing piece of writing, it’s also a major downer. As an example, at one point, the fallout of the actions of one 9-year-old boy destroys the lives and livelihoods of an entire village, with devastating, irreversible, long-lasting effects. Honestly, what do you do with that? This is not a book to pick up for the feel-good factor. There isn’t any.

But that last 10% gives me hope that the plot might FINALLY be picking up, and I’ll see where book two goes. Ms. Cross can string a tale, she can weave atmosphere, she can bring you to tears—laughter maybe not so much, but heart-rending agony, sure—and she can create a believable fantasy world. Worth reading.

Description of Shadowed by Wings:

The Dragon Temple Saga continues as Zarq Darquel embarks on a trial by fire, defying Dragon Temple scripture by undergoing the rigorous training of an apprentice dragonmaster, while desperately searching for the doctrine that allows women permission to participate in the battles at Arena.

Yet Zarq’s difficulties pale in comparison to her craving for the hallucinogenic dragon venom, and her desire to understand the dragons themselves-both of which make her a vessel to receive the ancestral memories of the great beasts. And now, eager for the knowledge only Zarq can uncover, Temple has her imprisoned and subjected to starvation and torture-all to make her reveal the dragons’ deepest secrets…

Review:

I wasn’t sure I was going to bother reviewing the second and third books in this series. I just wasn’t sure what I’d say. I liked the book? I hated the book? These books left me reeling, cringing, demoralised, and strangely vitalised at the same time? How does one express that?

In reading others’ reviews, I sense I’m not the only person struggling to find the appropriate balance. I see a lot of middling reviews, indicative of a lot of emotionally confused readers. I can completely relate. That’s where this book shoves its reader, right into the middle on ‘how should I feel about that?’ The problem is that while it’s occasionally obvious, a lot of time it isn’t. Not because the things that happen aren’t horrid and denounceable in the extreme, but because so many really, really bad things happen that some bad things just don’t seem to rise to the level of atrocity anymore (even though in isolation, that would definitely be). It’s rare for a book to transport a reader there.

A major theme of this book (these books) is the abuse of the powerless by the powerful and its amazing ability to remain socially invisible to otherwise good people. As an outsider, it’s hard to imagine how it’s rationalised, but it is… every day. Here, it’s just made a little more obvious. We deal with a strict caste system, a violent patriarchy that allows women NO influence in their own lives, slavery, the marginalization of a native populace by a conquering people and the resulting institutionalised racism, economic entrapment, social stigmatisation, a dangerous and far-reaching religious organisation, and a ruling class that can no longer understand their duty, blinded as they are by their perceived superiority. This leaves a lot of powerless people, many powerless on numerous fronts, and a myriad of ways for victims to be victimised…traumatised.

In the middle of all this is Zarq, a young, powerless woman who trips along and, by dint of simply surviving the MANY horrors of her own life and being the right person in the right place at the right time, manages to almost accidentally start a revolution. (Ah, the transformative power of even one person willing to sacrifice their all for the greater good!) And she does survive and witness horrors. Thus, the reader deals with them too. Beyond just the basic hardships of poverty and austerity (she spent ten years in a remote convent as a child), there are kidnappings, rapes, battles, betrayal, attempted assassinations, loss, and pitifully few moments of relief. It’s all hard on the readers’ psyche.

The book also treats sex as amazingly mutable. I actually really liked this about it, but we all know sex can tie people in knots faster than just about anything. We deal with consensual and non-consensual (a lot of the latter, though blessedly vague on details) sex of both the hetero- and homosexual (both M & F) variety (In fact, this is the clearest case of institutionalised rape I’ve ever seen in a book), incest, pedophilia, and even bestiality (though there’s no interspecies penis/vagina contact). I can readily imagine a whole host of readers being put off by any one of those, let alone all of them in one text.

So, in the end, I’m left wondering what I thought of Shadowed by Wings. I certainly didn’t enjoy reading it, but having finished it, I’m really glad to have read it. I recommend others do the same.