Soldier by Julie Kagawa
Genre: Fantasy
Published by: Mira Ink
Pages: 380
Format: ARC e-book
Rating: ★★★
Series: Talon (#1) | Rogue (#2)

The third instalment in the Talon saga and, surprisingly, I liked it the most out of all the books in this series so far. I don’t know what it is, but these books sort of creep on me. They’re fun and unexpected. If you’ve enjoyed the series so far then I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed with Soldier. (Unless, like me, your favourite character is Dante…)

LOVE TRIANGLE

Okay, so I was not exactly thrilled when Ember decided to stay with Riley. Yes, he’s a dragon and can understand her, blah blah. But I only felt a feel connection between Ember and Garret. In Soldier the love triangle intensifies by 100%. It’s been a really long time since I’ve read something where the love triangle is really prominent – maybe the last time was Twilight or maybe I’m just really good at selective amnesia-ing (it’s a thing!) bad love triangles.

THE ORDER VS. ST. GEORGE

There has been so much tension between these two organisations and now BOTH of them have moles somewhere in the system?! Seriously, how corrupted can they get. There are some pretty big reveals about The Order, after learning so much about St. George in Rogue. I liked the development, but I would still really appreciate more Dante.

When I mentioned this on my Goodreads update, it seems that half of the Talon fandom agree and the other hand disagree entirely. I don’t know what it is I just really like Dante. He can be a bit of a d-bag, yes, but I think he’s in a pretty rough situation right now. I only want to see him develop! Will he turn into the hero of ages?! Who knows! All I can say is that so far the book titles have implied certain characters will be the most prominent, and I hope the fourth book will have more Dante.

CHARACTERS

Garret comes to the UK! I’ve been thinking this whole time that St. George and the dragon is a English myth, so why are we in America? But in Soldier Garret finally hops on a plane and comes to the home of the dragon slayers. Other than that, oh man. It’s flashback time. LIKE SERIOUSLY. He has a whole bunch of flashbacks that run in parallel to the story that give us more insight into what he was like when he was originally training to be a soldier. Surprisingly, I enjoyed these sections – maybe even the most.

Riley. Eugh, I’m kind of bored with him to be honest. He’s so passionate and raw, and sometimes it’s like it comes from nowhere, you know? As for Ember, I can’t say she stood out to me in this book. I need her to comes to terms with her human and dragon side, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be dragged out and we won’t know which she prefers until she chooses which boy to be with. But you know who did stand out: JADE. (Jades are always awesome. Awesome just comes with the name.) That’s right more female characters to balance out all this testosterone!