Having read some of the books from Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series, I decided to read her YA debut, Voices of Dragons. The story doesn’t involve vampires or werewolves, and so it was refreshing in that regard. However, the plot seems to proceed pretty slowly, especially at the beginning.

The greatest strength of the novel lies in how seamlessly Vaughn creates a modern world in which it’s possible for dragons to exist. The re-emergence of the dragons is interwoven with humanity’s history really well. Vaughn also does a good job of portraying how life close to the borders of Dragon makes things like dragon-raid drills mundane until the peace is broken; and then, living in the closest American town to one of the dragon territories becomes terrifying.

Although I liked Kay, I never seemed to be able to connect with her. It just seemed like not only did I know her at a superficial level – virgin, teenager, enjoys rock climbing – but on top of that, her relationships didn’t appear very deep either.

On the other hand, I loved the character of Artegal! Vaughn’s writing really makes him come alive, and my favourite part of Voices of Dragons – besides the flight scenes where I wished I was the one on Artegal – was the way he is introduced because it just showed his complexity, beauty and power.