Firefighter Dragon (Fire & Rescue Shifters, #1)

by Zoe Chant

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

3.5 stars

This is a new-to-me author and narrator. The idea of taking a group of mythical creatures and putting them together into a group of first responders really intrigued me. Then I looked to see what kind of mythical creatures were in this series besides the dragon of this title (not that you really need more, I mean, how can you go wrong with DRAGONS??). Then to learn that there is a pegasus, a griffin and a sea dragon, I had to know more.

So this story isn’t very long, (117 pages or 3 hours and 41 minutes), so it is a quick listen. It was a fun story about an archaeologist who snuck onto some land and was illegally treasure hunting on her rival’s land, no less. She finds a very important artifact that she wants to put into a museum. However, a dragon shows up and tries to kill her with his fire. She calls emergency dispatch for help the shifter team arrives and saves her. However, the dragon that attacked her is still out to get her.

Dia shows up and rescues Virginia from the fire. He realizes very quickly that she is his mate. However, she is now terrified of dragons, so how to tell her that he was one as well. He decides to tell her that he’s a dragon hunter, not a dragon. The lies keep getting deeper and when his friends find out, they are not happy with him (I can’t say that I blame them).

Like I said, this is a really short story. I would’ve liked to have had a bit more, but it was a complete story. It gave me everything I needed to enjoy it. I wish there was a little more worldbuilding. We didn’t get to spend much time with any of the secondary characters, though I did enjoy the time we spent with them (excited to get to their books).

The part I did find really interesting was the dominance battle between the two dragons. Instead of actually fighting, they keep naming off pieces of treasure in their hord. Whoever had the most impressive hord (this is done by value, not by volume, so one extra good piece is better than a thousand mediocre pieces). I just found that this was very interesting and does play a large part of the story.

Narration
This is the first time I’ve listened to Lucy Rivers. I saw her name on several of the nominations for our Sultry Listener Awards, so I was excited to give her a try. I have to say, she lived up to the hype. I thought she did a great job. Dia, the dragon, is Welsh and had a great accent. There is also a Scottish accent for one of the members of the fire rescue team. Then there is the sea dragon who had a very interesting voice. Virginia is the only female (unless there was a really minor part which I might’ve forgotten about), so Ms. Rivers had many male characters that she had to voice and she did a great job. I highly recommend giving her a try.