Given

by Nandi Taylor

Yenni is a fierce warrior princess, but her father is sick with a wasting illness - and she must find the cure. Should she fail, she faces losing her father and exile from her home in the kingdom of Yirba.

With only her wits, strength and sacred runelore to protect her she must travel the strange, magical and unwelcoming Empire of Cresh. And no one warned her about the dragons. Especially not about Weysh.

Weysh is a shape-shifter, sometimes a man, at other times a dragon. When he claims Yenni as his Given - his destined partner - they are tied together by the bonds of fate.

Yenni is no man's - or dragon's - plaything. But other magic must be at work, because despite everything that she thought she knew, Weysh might just be her best hope to save her father and her home in the kingdom . . .

• ISBN10: 0241455758
• ISBN13: 9780241455753
• Publish Date: 23 January 2020 (first published 21 January 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Given is the first book in a new YA series by Nandi Taylor. Released 21st Jan 2020 by Wattpad, it's 352 pages and available in hardback, paperback and ebook formats.

This is a coming of age dragon romance with a young female protagonist who is a person of color. She's being sent to another culture for a year long exchange and hopefully to find a cure for a wasting sickness which has struck her father the chieftain of her people.

There were a lot of things to like about this book. The author is an adept storyteller and the background magic systems and world building are compelling and original. I liked that the main character was a minority, that she was fairly intelligent and ethical, and that she was represented as strong and independent.

My reservations with the book are things which potentially will be in the plus column for many readers. A large portion of the plot revolves around her being 'given' (bonded) to the dragon shifter she's literally just met. It's not insta-love, she doesn't just capitulate at once, which is good, but the romance subplot which might well be a plus for romance fans, found me rolling my jaded eyes at several points. I was surprised there wasn't any overt racism or condescension/colonialism from the other characters, since she's a new arrival from a culture/ethnicity which her hosts, the Cresh, haven't seen for centuries.

All in all, it's a well written YA fantasy with a strong romance subplot and female protagonist.

Four stars, it'll be interesting to read what comes next.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

[llamareads]

Well, at least the cover is gorgeous. First off, I’m still puzzling over how the blurb calls this a “subversive fantasy-romance” when honestly it’s pretty much exactly like every other enemies-to-lovers fated mates romance out there. At best, it suggests an unfamiliarity with either genre that explains a lot about this book.

“Well, because I am a woman who enjoys hunting, and learning about runes, and learning about combat, people act as if I am strange and unnatural.”
“Hmm,” Diedre and Zui said as one.
“But it was once very common for women to do these things. You know what I think? I think it is everyone else who is unnatural.”

Yenni yearns for more freedom. As a princess, she’s expected to marry the prince of a neighboring tribe, and he expects her to give up her “unfeminine” activities – hunting, weapons practice, and runelore, the magic practiced by the people of the Sha islands. So, she undertakes a journey, sanctioned by the gods, to the empire of Cresh in hopes of finding a cure for her father’s sickness. Enrolling at a prestigious Creshen university to learn more about their magic may be the only way to save him, but navigating Creshen culture and prejudice is an almost insurmountable obstacle she hadn’t expected – as is the interest from one very pushy dragon.

I liked Yenni. She’s strong, regal, and not afraid to work hard for what she wants. However, she was painfully oblivious to those who meant her harm, both unintentionally and intentionally. There’s a lot of racism directed at her, but Yenni doesn’t understand why they’re treating her differently – for instance, a classmate asks to touch her hair and then is startled when Yenni asks to touch hers back. It’s 90% through the book before Yenni starts really calling people on the racism – and that’s after she’s revealed as a princess. Most of it’s of the overt variety, rather than microaggressions, and the actions and Yenni’s failure to engage with it made the book read much younger than I expected. One thing that sat uncomfortably with me involved names. Yenni insists on being addressed as “Yenni Ajani” because, in Sha culture, it’s rude to only call someone by their first name unless they’re very close. However, because one-syllable names are only for gods in her culture, Yenni changes her friends’ Creshen names – Harth becomes Har-tha and Weysh becomes Wey-sha – without their input. It was a minor thing, but I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just explain to them why it bothered her and come up with nicknames together.

Weysh furrowed his brow, confused. “So I should simply leave her be?”
“If that’s what she wants.”
“But why? How would that endear me to her?”
Zui threw a quick, fond glance at Harth. “Because respecting a woman’s wishes is one of the most seductive things a man can do.” Weysh shook his head. It seemed incredibly counterproductive, but everything else he’d tried so far had been nothing short of disaster.

And then there’s Weysh. Frankly, he’s awful. His main fault is that he’s painfully honest – blunt to the point of rudeness, and past that. It’s telling that Yenni finds him “less beastly as a beast.” Frankly, he’s awful to pretty much everyone around him. Somehow, though, all of his friends tell Yenni that he’s hardworking, responsible, good with women – but we never actually see that in the book, we’re only told about it. Even during Yenni’s darkest moments, when she goes to him for comfort, he automatically turns the conversation back to himself – obviously, it’s his fault that she’s having problems because he didn’t take proper care of her! It’s only after Weysh is left partially disabled – unable to smell, which is a big deal for a dragon – that he realizes how badly he’s been treating Yenni.

So, what did I like? I loved the magic systems, both the Sha runelore and the Creshen magic. I would happily have read more about Uhad’s 67 laws of casting or why all their incantations need to have “source” in them, but unfortunately the surface is just barely scraped. Runelore, with its hymns and patterns in special paint, was equally fascinating and I loved all the parts involving Yenni explaining it or using it. Disappointingly, while Weysh realizes almost right away that runes would allow him to work magic in dragon form – Creshen magic relies on spoken triggers, and dragons can’t speak – they don’t get around to trying it out until three-quarters of the way through the book.

This is the first in a series, so the book ends without much of the plot points being resolved, leaving the ending a bit jumbled. Overall, this isn’t a badly written book, but it felt like it needed tighter editing to figure out what story is being told. Is it about Yenni’s quest to find a cure for her father’s illness? Her relationship with Weysh? Her adventures in Cresh at the university? I was never quite sure. I think this would work for for middle-grade readers, but it’s a bit light for the YA audience.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

[Kate (Blogging with Dragons)]

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
DNF 52%

I really wanted to like Given by Nandi Taylor. The cover for the novel is absolutely gorgeous. Plus, it sounded like a more diverse take on Eight Simple Rules for Dating a Dragon, a book I really enjoyed! Furthermore, the summary for Given promises a grand adventure with Caribbean and West African roots with tribal princess Yenni Ajani at the helm of Given--fighting against racism, strange magics, cultures, and dragons--in a race against time to save her father from a mysterious disease known as wither rot. Imagine my surprise when I realized Given was very little like its description and was instead mainly a poorly developed romance that happened to take place in a magic academy setting with very little exposition given--pardon the pun--and absolutely zero likable characters. It was honestly a struggle for me to get past 18% of Given and it was through sheer force of will that I made it to 52%. The only saving graces in the novel for me were the systems of magic, world-building, and the interesting idea of wither rot.

“I will gain entrance to these Creshen’s academy. I’m top of my class, I speak five languages, and I am princess of the Yirba. I will not fail.”

The novel begins in the Moonrise Isles, the home of Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba, daughter of the chief-clan, making her a veritable princess of her tribe. Given hurls a ton of fantastical terms at us to breathe life into the tribe and its islands, and it might have worked, if it weren’t for the fact that as soon as we are introduced to this life and its terms, Yenni Ajani, as she prefers to be called, immediately leaves it. And sadly, everything else in Given occurs just as instantaneously, and as a result, it is difficult to determine what is happening in what feels like one giant event dump or to even care.

Author Taylor tries to set up Yenni Anaji as an intelligent, kind-hearted, and strong-willed warrior princess in very little exposition. We are given so little actual time and description to get to know the characters and the world around them that the author relies on telling us how we should actually perceive the characters . But sadly, instead of the trope the author is obviously going for of a warrior princess with a heart of gold, what she manages to create is a very privileged character who isn't very likable.

“Back home she didn’t have much use for money. If she needed something she asked her mother for it, and more often than not things were gifted to her.”

But even worse than Yenni Anaji is the man/dragon she’s supposed to fall for--Weysh. In dragon form, Weysh smells Yenni’s sent the first time and marks her as his Given, or soulmate thing that’s never really explained, but is expected to somehow understood by both the reader and foreigner Yenni Anaji, who has never actually encountered a dragon in her life. Immediately entranced by her scent and the idea of actually having a Given, Weysh literally doesn’t even bother to learn Yenni Anaji’s name or anything remotely about her. Instead, he immediately proposes marriage and informs her that she should have his dragon baby. On other occasions, he swoops down in dragon form and carries her off without her consent. How charming.

“‘Sweet,’ Weysh said patiently, ‘I’m not some breeding stud you can cajole into plowing a mare. Carmenna is not my match.’ He held her eyes with his own. ‘You are.’’

Given tells us that Weysh is actually a great guy/dragon and that he treated all of his past many female interests--the novel makes sure to emphasize how desired he is by the general female population--and his family really well. But we never see the character in any of these relationships because he unceremoniously dumps his ex, Carmenna, as soon as he smells Yenni Anaji for the first time. I find it absolutely unbelievable that Yenni Anaji could ever develop feelings for the dangerously immature Weysh, who really seems to have no redeeming qualities except that he cannot speak in dragon form.

“Weysh furrowed his brow, confused. ‘So I should simply leave her be?’
‘If that’s what she wants.’
‘But why? How would that endear me to her?
Zui threw a quick, fond glance at Harth. ‘Because respecting a woman’s wishes is one of the most seductive things a man can do.’
Weysh shook his head. It seemed incredibly counterproductive, but everything else he’d tried so far had ended in disaster.”

Given also beats readers over the head with the fact that dragons do not have any feelings for humans when in their dragon form. However, Given contradicts this at literally every turn. In fact, the very first meeting between Weysh and Yenni-Anaji, he drops out of the sky like "some overgrown demon hawk” (which is definitely not the best description of a dragon I've ever read), and unceremoniously licks her thigh because he is so overpowered by her scent and the fact that he’s found his Given. Ick. And if that weren’t bad enough, the rest of the cast of characters are all completely flat. Weysh’s dragon friends Harth and Zui are supposed to be great--patient and long suffering--I know because the author repeatedly tells me so--but they’re little more than hood ornaments on a nondriveable car.

Sadly, the dialogue of Given is no better than the painful romance or the constant telling rather than showing. There are innumerable nonsensical lines like, “We select only the fat of the meat, the best to take part in training here.” But what was worse was that literally almost every sentence that came out of Weysh’s mouth ended in “lovely.” His mother, his sister, his Given, girls on the street, were all referred to as “lovely.” I wish I had kept a running tally of how many times it was said. Given clearly could have benefited from some more editing.

Despite its issues, Given does a great job of establishing not only its magical systems and its laws, but also its lore. These were the main reasons I gave the book a full star. Author Taylor sets up believable and various magical systems--the Runelore of Yenni Ajani’s home and the more ritualistic Creshen magic. She even establishes that there is a false stereotype for Runelore users--that they sacrifice infants and animals for their craft. It was interesting to see Yenni Ajani try to learn the Creshen way of magic and how it differed from her own. I did want her to succeed at finding a cure for her father’s mysterious wither-rot disease through the use of this new magic on a superficial level, but the novel didn’t let me get to know her father well enough to evoke any real sympathy for him or for his family.

The other thing that Given does fairly well is to establish some world-building and lore. The Moonrise Islands believe in the Sha gods and have a whole strict belief system built around it that actually sets Yenni-Ajani out on her quest in the first place. The Creshen people believe in totally different gods, such as Byen, the Kindly Watcher. Wyesh tells Yenni-Anaji the story of how dragonkind came to be, after of course, laughing at Yenni-Anaji’s own beliefs.

“In the beginning, Byen, the Kindly Watcher, was at war with Movay, Mistress of Demons. She sent her hell minions to destroy the world but was defeated by Byen and his true dragons. After that Byen gave ten percent of humanity the ability to transform into a lesser version of his sacred warriors, to defend the world should Movay’s demons return.”

I thought this was really interesting lore (it actually put me to mind of a simpler version of the lore in Book Review: The Rage of Dragons ), and I wondered if it would have anything to do with the wither-rot disease in the rest of Given. But that mild curiosity and the potential shown by both the magic systems and the world-building was just not enough to get me through the rest of Given. Based on the parts of Given I managed to get through, I feel that perhaps this novel would be better suited for younger audiences, such as intermediate readers, as it is not on the same level of other young adult fantasy novels, with believable romances, realistic dialogue, and developed  characters.


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[layawaydragon]

I loved Given so damn much, it’s all so…*perfect* that I just kinda want to throw up the 5 stars and call it a day.



Yenni is driven and clever. She’s a warrior, mage, and a scholar. Her father is sick and she is going to get to the bottom of this. She’s a princess that’s going to be promised to another that she’s not hot over, but whatever, she always does her duty.

Weysh is dragonkind with fa-mily issues and a…girlfriend? What? Until he gets his first sniff of Yenni. He’s in his last year at the top warrior/mage college in Cresh. He’s got a plan and a chip on his shoulder as an untethered dragon. But everything changes as his typical MO fails to sway Yenni and he’s gotta shape up.

She makes A-MAZING friends. One of which is a lesbian! One is Asian. Several of which are dragons.

He’s got a couple dragon friends. One nemesis. And an ADORABLE little sister.

She learns a lot of Creshen magic. He learns her runelore. They go flying and exploring and dining together.

What more could you goddamn ask for?!?!

Oh yeah.

MORE.