A cozy romantasy that lives up to its title….
I was caught – there’s no other word for it – by the title of J Penner’s second Adenashire book: A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons. After all, both librarians and dragons are some of my favorite characters. Now granted, usually the librarians are in mysteries, and the dragons are in fantasies, but that doesn’t always have to be the case – and Penner does a nice job of combining the two in a fun romantasy.
As the story opens, Doli Butterbuckle, who was one of the entrants in the baking competition in the first book, has settled into Adenashire. She’s working in the local bookshop, It’s About Tome, and she has gathered a rather nice found family (a human, a couple of ogres, a fennex, some elves) in counterpoint to her own overbearing dwarf parents. Calm often comes before a storm, though, so when her uncle bequeaths her an almost-ready-to-hatch dragon egg, and then her mother and father show up for an unexpected visit, things get interesting. The dragon egg hatches, releasing Evvy, a terminally cute, but also terminally chaotic, young dragon. And then there’s the handsome gargoyle who has recently moved to town. Shake and stir, and enjoy the result.
Provided you go into it with expectations of a slower-paced cozy fantasy with a nice dollop of romance, A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons is as enjoyable as its name, and gets four stars from me. (Please note that four stars is a really solid, read-this-book, recommendation since I try to limit star-flation a bit.) If, however, you’re looking for more of a high-adventure fantasy, this probably won’t be for you.
One final note – when I’m thinking about reviewing a book in a series I’m not familiar with, I will often try to go back and read at least one of the earlier books to see if I really want to read/review the new one. In this case, the first book, A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic, was available via Kindle Unlimited, so I read it. I enjoyed it a lot as well, and I think it helped to have that background when reading this one. Penner does a pretty good job of filling in the absolutely necessary background, so A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons can be read as a standalone, I think. But if you are able to read the first one first, I would recommend that.
And finally, my thanks to Net Galley and Poisoned Pen Press for my review copy.