Dragon Heat: Dragon Heat, Vol. 1

Phoenix’s overstuffed debut, an erotic paranormal, finds vampire king Tardieh reconnecting with draconian demigoddess and shape-changer Zoricah in present-day New York, 200 years after she saved him from a torturer in Romania. She seeks his help in rescuing kidnapped women who are slated to be tortured and killed by an immortal sociopath. The team-up is stormy; their steamy attraction to each other clashes with Tardieh’s distrust of Zoricah’s motives and her impatience with his unfounded suspicion that she’s setting him up for a fall. Meanwhile, a sizable supporting cast, including the players in a secondary romance, is thoroughly introduced then mostly ignored. Though readers might enjoy the wide range of paranormal entities and their complex backstories (dropped in lumps of text throughout), the erotic tension and subsequent sex scenes mesh awkwardly with the horrors inflicted upon the captive women, whose deaths are too soon forgotten in favor of the protagonists’ rapprochement and a melodramatic climax that feels unearned. [em](BookLife) [/em]