Customer Reviews

Naked Dragon: A Works Like Magick Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I wish I had skipped this ham-handed attempt at a lighthearted dopey-dragon-rescues-prickly-damsel story. The plot was simplistic and the characters were inconsistant and outright silly. The villains were elusive and lacked any real meance at all.

Bastion Dragonelli is a dragon masquerading as a handyman in pursuit of his heart-mate, a struggling B&B owner, MacKenna, who's been targeted by an evil condo developer. (You see, Bastion was HIDING his dragon-nature. That's why he went with "Dragonelli.")

We know that Dragonelli has spent the last few thousand years banished with his brother dragons to a fairy island, and emerged in this world as an overlly-literal "alpha" male. We know this because the author takes every possible opportunity to allow Dragonelli to misunderstand the meaning of words to an extent impossible for those over the age of five and free of brain damage. For instance, Dragonelli moronically persists in believing "gay" means happy, despite a lot of context to the contrary. Sometimes Dragonelli has moments of amazing insight, however, like his instinctive understanding of the phrase "Special Ops." Perhaps Delta Force had an outpost on his fairy island. Or maybe Dragonelli's status as an "alpha male" automatically allowed him to understand manly terms like that. I wonder if all "alpha males" from Dragonelli's world also take so readily to interior design?

I could go on, but I already wasted enough time reading this book. For anyone still considering this purchase, one final fact: Dragonelli refers to his er ... package ... over and over again (sometimes out load) as his "man lance." Man. Lance. Enough said.

The people who gave this book a two-starred review basically had it right, but I was so irritated at having purchased it and then spent the time to read it, I did this review to bring the rating down.

The premise started off promising enough. There was some humor in the way the dragon/man was written. He hadn't been around for hundreds of years so obviously he didn't understand anything around him. There was a plot--the heroine is about to lose her family home to a bad guy, and interesting supporting characters. But the author didn't know how or couldn't weave an interesting story around the plot and characters.

And then she went overboard. ...the hero's man spear... You read it correctly...an ugly thing that kept poking out. Then it turns out to have scales and wraps itself around her wrist. I can't adequately describe the amount of eye rolling that I was doing while trying to read this.

I almost quit at the 80 percent mark on my Kindle--that's how uninteresting I found the book.

Naked Dragon...what happened to this story? It has a wonderful premise, and the characters have a lot of potential. But the writing in this book was just...wow...I can't even begin to describe it. But let me try anyway. The story moved extremely slowly. The dialog was cheesy, excesively so. The transitions between scenes were confusing. The story itself felt unfocused, as if it was headed in one direction but then it doesn't, and it doesn't really go anywhere else either. I felt like I was in a very badly organized dream, where you wake up and you still don't feel like you quite understood what happened. By the time the resolution comes, if you have not given up on the story before then, you can only say that it was about time and thank goodness the book is finished. The sad thing about it is that I really wanted to like the book. I truly liked the characters and their problems were definitely something that should have been interesting to resolve. But I just cannot recommend this book. There are too many other books which are really worth the money and to recommend this would just be irresponsible. I am sure some people will like it. I have read too many truly well written paranormal romance books to think highly of this one.

Fortunately, I picked this up from the library. By about page 70 or so I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to tolerate this female enough to enjoy the book so looked up the reviews. Yeah.

We've seen this female character many times. She's a bit heavy and wants to make sure everyone knows that she knows this and is perfectly okay with it. So okay that she brings it into every conversation. Enough already. She's also a bitch but we have to describe her as spunky, spirited or any of those words we often see attributed to selfish female characters.

Thank goodness I only wasted a little time and no money on this.

When I looked at this series this book wasn't the first one to catch my eye. I actually wanted to read the second book in the series, Bedeviled Angel (A Works Like Magick Novel). I have a bit of a love affair with angels. Because of my series order OCD I had to read this one first. It was no big deal though, I love dragons too. After reading this one I can safely say that I won't be reading the next book. This author is way too silly and over the top for me.

I liked the beginning of the book. It was actually pretty cute. Because English was not Bastien's first language there were lots of hilarious conversations. He takes everything literally and frustrates (but also amuses) McKenna horribly. When being trained how to interact with people he was instructed to say "Okay" whenever he didn't understand anything. It turned out to be pretty funny.

I also thought Bastien's thoughts about the "bony females" following him around were cute. His inner thoughts and the terms he used were great. His little helper dragon, Jock, was adorable too. I loved his eagerness to pop smoke. Unfortunately my enjoyment of the book soon turned.

I found McKenna to be a little irritating. I do not like women with "hourglass figures" who have annoyingly false insecurities. Bastien was afraid to get naked in front of her, but his fear actually made sense. Also, I just didn't get McKenna. She wears shorts under her dresses because she works on a farm. Why not just wear shorts? Why wear a long dress when doing manual labor? Odd. She's really cutesy and irritating too. She's always referring to Bastien as "buster" and using juvenile replacements for curse words. It just made her seem very unnatural.

Even though I had some issues with it, I didn't actually start actively disliking it until around page 180. Bastien had a habit of referring to his penis as his "man lance" or his "dragon lance." It didn't seem odd coming from him though, it really worked for him. I have no clue why, during the first sex scene, McKenna continued the trend. Being a modern female used to the English language I would expect her to have a healthy grasp of the words used to describe sex and the body parts involved in it. I did not expect her to (in all seriousness) refer to his penis as a "dragon lance" and a "magickal jock-sock puppet." What?!? That was really the beginning of the end for me.

Everything started to get way too over the top from then on. Jokes that were funny in the beginning became tired and old. You can only use the same joke for so long before it seems like you're beating a dead horse. We know, McKenna's a real woman and all the other skinny women are poor creatures. I do have to admit it was funny when he got a tear in his eye after watching models on TV.

I got really ticked when Bastien's ability to sense McKenna's pain got used as soapbox trigger for how horrible life is for women. McKenna is down on any man who wants to have sex while she's on her period. Only Bastien, who would never "put her through such discomfort" really understands what it means to be a woman. Then they both lay around for three days babying each other with a heating pad. What? I know McKenna's her own boss, but if she tried to take three days off from a normal job because she was on her period, her butt would be fired. I just dislike books that use things like that to beat down men for not knowing how hard it is to be a woman. Get over it!


***SPOILER***

The prehensile penis thing was really weird for me. When Bastien first made comments about being nervous about not looking like other men I just assumed it would lead to him being abnormally large, which he was. There was another part when they're swimming where she thinks she gets touched by a snake. That just seemed to imply more of the same; he's clown-shoe large. Boy, I didn't know the half of it! His penis is shaped like a dragon tail. The head is referred to as a "spade." It has movable scales underneath the skin and it can move enough to grab things and wrap around her hand because it's eager. Very weird.

McKenna's friend, Lizzie, popping out three babies at home in a matter of minutes and then being right as rain seemed fantastical. Also, her family ghosts giving Bastien advice was kind of weird. They didn't strike me as cute or sweet, just an odd plot device.

***END SPOILERS***

Everything in this story seemed skimmed over and hunky dory two seconds later. Even the climax of the story and the ending were ho-hum and silly. It was a very light book with no real depth of plot or character at all.

I have made two attempts to get through this book. I am nearly done and all I can say is what a waste of time and money. The female main character is completely irritating and extremely unlikeable. She complains about EVERYTHING, except the male characters deformed prehensile man parts, those she finds perfectly acceptable. Ugh! The male character is supposed to be an alpha male, you know because the author tells you. You certainly wouldn't know based on his behavior. Puh-lease! Any alpha male in his right mind would have run from this irritating woman, or buried her in the backyard. The plot drags, the sex scenes are either uninteresting or just gross (see previous comment on prehensile penis), and the characters are either irritating or contrived. SAVE YOUR MONEY!

The Roman soldiers were fighting when Killian the crone of Chaos cursed them; changing them into dragons and propelling them into an alternate reality on the Island of Stars. They have waited for centuries to come home as humans. Now they have a chance due to Killian's enemy Andra who enables one of them Bastian to return to Earth two millennia after the banishment spell as a human in search of his soulmate.

In Salem's End, the firm Works Like Magick hires magical temps for their clients. Viveca Quinlan hooks up Bastian as a handyman for McKenna Greylock, who must turn her bed and breakfast into a profit making venture or lose an estate that has been part of her family for centuries. .The land developer has other thoughts for the property and will do anything to obtain it. Only Bastian Dragonelli stands in the way, but his employer wants him to leave as she fears her attraction to her temp.

The first Works Like Magick urban romantic fantasy is a fun lighthearted entertaining tale that is filled with magic mostly because of the hero's struggles to adapt to modern society. Amusing yet with a serious subplot as no one escapes the wrath of Killian, fans will enjoy the naked Dragon who learns what a lance truly is and its true purpose from his beloved employer.

Harriet Klausner

A friend reccommended this book to me, as she knows I love to read. I was highly disappointed in it as it took less than a day for me to read it. The plot was predictable. Characters lacked the depth that they could of had. I even feel like I missed parts that weren't there because of the skipping in the time line. I even went back to see if I missed something and I didn't! I feel as if my day and money were ripped off. I should have read the reviews first so I knew what I was at least getting myself into and wouldn't have spent the money.
-Side note- McKenna is a real woman and it was refreshing to have one in a story instead of the picture perfect woman that today's society wants.

Warning, SPOILERS (most likely):

Naked Dragon is a terrible book, but I kind of liked it anyway. It definitely qualifies for the brain candy genre. But if you're in the mood for cat-ridding fairies, red "celebration" smoke provide by a cute mini-dragon, and an oddly charming male lead, you might want to give this one a try.

It tells the heartwarming tale of Bastian and his man lance (seriously, I've never read the phrase "man lance" so many times in one book--or, well, ANY book). Actually, the focus of this book is on the newly-human, formerly-dragon Bastian attempting to woo his reluctant and entirely human lady love. Oh, and if he can't win her over there are gloom-and-doom consequences of the magical variety for his dragon friends back home (i.e. in the parallel dimension he escaped from).

If you've read any of Ms. Blair's books, Naked Dragon won't surprise you much. It's comforting in the way you can only achieve through mild and inoffensive predictability. If this is your first Annette Blair book, it's a good one to start with because it doesn't connect to any of her other novels, and it's the first in a new series. They're all easy reads; so easy that I often find myself dazedly skimming through pages.

The worst thing about Naked Dragon is undoubtedly Bastian's whiny "heart mate" McKenna. She spends almost the whole book telling Bastian that he can't possibly be interested in her because she's such an ugly, fat cow (I'm paraphrasing for your benefit). McKenna has a few good qualities: generous to her friends, likes apples, has a goal (i.e. to transform her dead family's ramshackle Victorian into a profitable Inn). Unfortunately, any positive attributes she has are vastly overshadowed by her overwhelming compulsion to put herself down at every opportunity. I sympathized with her at the beginning, but after awhile it was just plain annoying.

If I had to give this one a grade, it would be a C minus (just barely good enough to read).

Bastian Dragonelli was once a Roman soldier who was cursed and turned into a dragon who now is on current day Earth charged with saving his brothers by completing a mission. McKenna Greylock is a full-figured witch who is trying to save her property from an evil developer by turning it into a bed and breakfast.

Bastian provides fodder for humor with his misinterpretations of current Earth life due to his proclivity of taking everything literally. McKenna, on the other hand, is extremely wary of men and resists her attraction to the handsome and hot Bastian.

I really like some of Annette Blair's books--specifically her Accidental Witch trilogy. This book just didn't do it for me. I found the dialogue too stilted, some of the situations the hero and heroine got into were too idiotic for me. Blair has an annoying habit (in my humble opinion) of trying to be too cutesy with her dialogue--making up words, etc. For instance Bastian calls animals "snacks" including McKenna's cat. Funny the first couple of times, but after awhile the 'joke' wears thin.

This isn't a horrible book, but I would not say it is one of Blair's best either. The book was somewhat confusing at times with the various situations. Another reviewer called it "choppy" and I would totally agree with that assessment.