In the first book of the Draga Court series, Princess Adelina’s coming-of-age party will declare to the worlds she is finally eligible to wed. All she wants is to serve her people and the crown with honor, but when a dangerously attractive prince from another galaxy – one who they all thought was dead – arrives with warnings of monstrosities and war, will her feelings put her in a position where she has to choose between her people and love?
The Draga Court series is a beautiful combination of fantasy and space opera set in a faraway future where humans have altered their genetics to save their species from their destructive natures. Dominance and rank weave a complicated dance among the galaxy’s society where a true submissive has to find her place, and learn the true meaning of power and love.
Even though I spoke highly of this novel when I wrote my short blurb for the blog tour, I don’t quite agree with what I originally said. I rushed through this book the first time before I realized that I was going to be completely unable to write my full review on my cell phone. After the trip, I basically forgot everything and had to read the book again. On my second time through, I noticed a few issues that I hadn’t picked up on before.
For starters, this book seemed a bit messy to me. There was the main plot, but somewhere in the middle of the book, I felt that it had been lost. Originally, I thought that Nadyah was the main character. This confused me as we slowly switched to an Adelina-centric plot. Once we got into Adelina’s main story, things smoothed out a bit. This rough start ended up making me more confused than it was worth.
Then when the story actually started, it took me a while to actually get into the main character. I wanted to like her, but I just felt no connection whatsoever. This followed me throughout the entire book, and it made me read even slower as I tried to find some way to connect with her.
The world was unique, but another thing I missed in my speed-read was the fact that the description was very lacking in certain areas. I was able to understand how the dominant/submissive system worked, but the simple description of environments and certain scenes was just not there.
The plot moved semi-smoothly, and I did enjoy the romance between Adelina and Nash. My overall opinion of the book was that while it wasn’t horrible, it definitely wasn’t the best fantasy-romance novel that I have read. The small things that I noted above did irritate me as I read, but the story wasn’t that bad. I do want to read the next book in this series to see where it goes next, and hopefully, some of these minor errors will be fixed.
This world is definitely interesting and it reminded me of Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics in a story. I rarely see full romance novels with this sort of world, only fanfiction. This definitely made the story for me.
I would recommend this story to people who enjoy fantasy-romance novels and who don’t mind a few irritating parts along the way.
I received an advance copy of this novel and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
