#[Balanced on the Blade's Edge](Dragon Blood Book One) by Lindsay Buroker - Book Review

[fairylynel]

[Balanced on the Blade's Edge](Dragon Blood, Book One) by Lindsay Buroker - Book Review

I started reading this book on a whim. The first three volumes of this saga were for free on Amazon and I decided to take the opportunity and read something new.

Contains Spoilers

This is my first book review, please take my words as my opinion only and nothing else.

This is the book's description in GoodReads:

"Colonel Ridge Zirkander isn't the model of military professionalism - he has a tendency to say exactly what’s on his mind, and his record has enough demerits to wallpaper the hull of an airship - but as the best fighter pilot in the Iskandian army, he’s used to a little leniency from his superiors. Until he punches the wrong diplomat in the nose and finds himself issued new orders: take command of a remote prison mine in the inhospitable Ice Blades Mountains. Ridge has never been in charge of anything larger than a flier squadron — what’s he supposed to do with a frozen fortress full of murderers and rapists? Not to mention the strange woman who shows up right before he arrives...

Sardelle Terushan wakes from three hundred years in a mage stasis shelter, only to realize that she is the last of the Referatu, the sorcerers who once helped protect Iskandia from conquerors. Their subterranean mountain community was blown up in a treacherous sneak attack by soldiers who feared their power. Everyone Sardelle ever knew is dead, and the sentient soulblade she has been bonded to since her youth is buried in the core of the mountain. Further, what remains of her home has been infested by bloodthirsty miners commanded by the descendants of the very soldiers who destroyed her people.

Sardelle needs help to reach her soulblade — her only link to her past and her last friend in the world. Her only hope is to pretend she’s one of the prisoners while trying to gain the commander’s trust. But lying isn't her specialty, especially when the world has changed so much in the intervening centuries, and if Colonel Zirkander figures out who she truly is, he’ll be duty-bound to sentence her to the only acceptable punishment for sorcerers: death."

I really believe I enjoyed this book a lot, mostly due to the fact that I haven’t picked something up in many, many years. It has several things I would like to talk about, from the plot to the characters and my favourite moments.

The first book focus mainly in two characters, them being Sardelle and Ridge. I truly loved Sardelle (her name is a tad odd, since it reminds me of a lot of sardinha, from my mother tongue, which means “sardine”. It’s really weird and I’m not sure why she got this name.). She was very charismatic, extremely smart and I definitely enjoyed reading the way she thought about her past and she perceived others (who had destroyed her kind) with kindness. Her pain was shown in a short, odd manner - I kind of hoped that the loss of her “family” would be more pertinent to the story and this sort of trauma would have had much more impact - but it was still used in a wonderful manner. Her interactions with her soulblade are cute, Sardelle seems to have a bit of a mother stance when it comes to this character in particular, it was quite endearing, in my honest opinion. When it comes to Ridge, I found him to be a fun and well-written character. I really liked that his arrival to the Ice Blades Mountains’ prison was used to show how his personality had not been corrupted by the militar system in Iskandia. Most of his peers in that prison were completely corrupted individuals, doing the most despicable things to the prisoners. His moral compass is quite good, he is always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the prison, while still making sure that people are still treated in a fair manner. The way he even ends up working in the Ice Blades Mountains is due to the fact that he defended a female colleague from being harassed from a Cofah general, I believe.

However, I do feel like their story was a tad forced. Perhaps there are people who enjoy the “in love at first sight” kind of story line, it is not my cup of tea, unfortunately. The relationship between Ridge and Sardelle kind of started out of nothing, he found her very atractive, beautiful and mysterious (the latter is mostly due to the fact that Sardelle is extremely bad at lying and she had to hide the fact that she was a witch). Sardelle’s infactuation with Ridge mostly started from the fact that she had to use him and his power in the prison to get her soulblade and, afterwards, leave that awful place. Their interactions are okay-ish, they just fall in love too quickly, way too quickly to seem normal. I wouldn’t find this so strange if they had at least a few more conversations about theirselves, let them know each other, even though this would have been impossible, since Sardelle hides her true identity for like three quarters of the whole book.

Even if this specific thing wasn’t my favourite, I still enjoyed several moments of this couple. The batlle against that gigantic owl in the snow and their love scene (even though, once again, it feels forced) was very pleasant to read. Lindsay Buroker has clearly talent to write battle scenes, they were all very well-written to the point that I could easily immerse myself into what was happening.

The ending - where they both meet in Ridge’s lake house - was possibly the part I disliked the most. I feel this way, because once again, while the focus of the book isn’t completely on their love story, this still affected greatly a lot of big impactful moments. It felt quite forced to see them meet each other again as if they had been long lost lovers.

In conclusion, I would give this book a 3,5/5 on GoodReads. It’s okay and I enjoyed reading it, the battle scenes, love scenes were all great, but the way the relationship between Sardelle and Ridge was build, unfortunately ruined the experience for me a bit.

Rating: 6/10