Song in the Silence (The Tale of Lanen Kaelar)- Elizabeth Kerner

Dragons have been done to death. Point blank, this story didn't bring anything new to the table, but it was a nice fluffy romantic fantasy. Lanen is a twenty-four year old horse farmer's daughter with a tendency to forget her expected femininity. This of course is not helped by her towering height, which is mentioned a few times too many in the novel. When Lanen's step-father dies, leaving her alone with the farm and the horses, she decides that it is time for her to go out into the world and fulfill her dream of meeting a real dragon. She packs up her things and heads to the nearest port city in order to secure a position on board one of the few ships to the Dragon Isle.

A quick note about scoring if it isn't clear enough in my commentary: 1-5 avoid
6-9 if you have time
10-13 definitely read
This can mainly be applied to the Overall Merit category.

Overall Merit: This was a sweet love story, albeit a slightly creepy one. As far as plot is concerned, it was relatively predictable, but still enjoyable to read. I did like the characters and found them easy to care about, even if they weren't the most complex souls out there. Overall, I'd recommend this book for any romantic (not erotic) fantasy fans out there. Score-8.5

Characters: Lanen is a feisty female heroine with a longing for adventure (then again I feel like every book with a female protagonist has one of these). I did like her and her voice was strong, you can really get a feel for the character. The only thing I didn't like about her was that she seemed incapable of getting out of trouble on her own. Sure she fought her captors and gave a few black eyes and bruises, but she never seemed to be able to get out of a situation without additional assistance. The main male protagonist, Akor, is an interesting character in theory (he is a dragon), however, his actual personality was a bit bland. As far as antagonists were concerned, Marik was kind of pathetic and at times you almost felt bad for him. The other main antagonist of the series doesn't really show up all that much in this book so I'll save him for another review. To sum it up, the characters were solid, but didn't bring anything new to the world of fantasy. Score- 8

Blush Factor: There wasn't really any smut in this book and while the romance was sweet, it did get to be a bit too gushy at times. Not to mention a good portion of the time it felt very contrived (interspecies conflict) and left me wondering just how Kerner was going to pull it off in a believable manner. Score-8

Structure: The one thing I didn't love about the structure was that it kept switching perspectives and at times it almost felt like too many characters were getting a say in the story and a good amount of the time I found myself skimming when I was on a perspective that I didn't really care about. Score- 6

Plot: I liked the plot--if I didn't I wouldn't have finished the trilogy. It was an interesting concept if not the most interesting of worlds. It was simple and not all that difficult to follow, I would have liked it better if it was a little bit less predictable. True, there was a somewhat complex subplot going on with demons and dark sorcery, but again it's been done.  Score-7

For summation, read this book if you have time and enjoy a simple, rather sappy romantic fantasy.