I believe I won this copy Casey L. Bond‘s Valor somewhere in the wilds of the internet.

Dragon. Warrior. Woman.

To honor her brother’s dying plea, Vayl Halifex carries a message that might prevent war with the location of their captive princess. Fortune and circumstance align in her favor and Vayl’s life is forever changed when an opportunity arises that only she can seize. With the help of a matchmaker, she becomes the emperor’s newest concubine. The new role affords her unfettered access to the gilded mountain stronghold, where the princess is rumored to be hidden away.

But she won’t take this risk alone. Her brother’s best friend, dragon warrior Estin, calls on the small army of elven assassins he leads to use their magic and might to flank her for the fight to come. The band of dragons takes Vayl into their fold and trains her as best they can before she’s whisked away to the palace.

Unbeknownst to the warriors, a dreadful magic simmers in the gilded fortress. With those fiercely protective of the emperor closing in, and the dragon assassins disappearing one by one, Vayl’s chance at escape narrows to a sliver, along with her hope of finding the princess or fighting her way out of the palace. With her heart entwined with that of the dragon warrior she was never supposed to love, she begins to fear the price of her treachery will be her life… or his.

OK, first things first, I was disappointed to discover there were no actual dragons, just a group that calls themselves the Dragons. Not a deal breaker, but it still made me sad. After that initial disappointment, I thought that this was a fine (if unexceptional story). It is, in fact, a fine version of what it is. But that’s also the problem. It’s a fine version of a story that there are 47 gagillion versions of. There’s nothing particularly new. So, if you know you like new-adult (bordering on YA) stories of young women triumphing over adversity to save the day and falling in love on the side, you will likely like this one as much as any other.

Having said all of that, I find myself lately becoming more aware of and on guard against sneakily fundamentalist stories, and I have to wonder if this isn’t one of them. Sure, Vayl has a backbone and fights for what she believes in. But when it comes down to it, she takes all the power offered her and gives it to a man she barely knows so that she can go home and be a wife and, one presumes, mother (given the conversation she has with Estin toward the end).

Sure, she offers up a help-meet to that man…in the form of a mute woman. A woman, I might add, whom Vayl does actually know and trust, who would have made a good leader. Plus, the only other young woman of power left to her own devices goes rogue and evil over a man. I would argue this serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when women are allowed too much freedom and power. They can’t be trusted with it. Then, add the fact that with the exception the Fae queen, literally every other woman in the book is related to serving male sexual desires in some fashion (a matchmaker pimping out concubines, her assistants, concubines, a maid that is hinted to have been a past concubine, a fae assassin in a new and exciting sexual relationship with another fae assassin, etc.) When I really start thinking about it, it’s not even subtle.

None of this is helped by the author thanking God, first and foremost, in her acknowledgements. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, obviously. But it does stand as a datapoint when one is looking at a (fantasy) story that so matches the fundamentalist agenda of seeing women as best serving in the home and as subordinate (silent) partners to men in positions of authority. I’m just saying.

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