Sandy M’s review of The Treasure Keeper (Drakon Series, Book 4) by Shana Abe
Paranormal Romance published by Dell 27 Apr 10

This is one of those series that I anxiously await for each book to hit the shelves. If you’re a shapeshifter fan, looking for something that’s different and written beautifully, these books are ones you don’t want to miss.

I suggest you start at the beginning with The Smoke Thief. You don’t have to, but this is a series that has a certain feel to it, that has a history to it, and to get the full effect, reading the books in order will only make your experience with it better.

Zoe is the seamstress of Darkfrith, a village of shapeshifters where only the men can alter their form from human to smoke and then to dragon. Their very existence is a secret from the rest of the world, and anyone labeled a runner is hunted down and dealt with quite severely. Zoe becomes a runner when her long-time fiance disappears while investigating the latest rumor of a cult of dragon hunters. Knowing their people do not return from such missions very often, Zoe isn’t able to leave Hayden to an unknown fate.

While she isn’t able to turn, Zoe does have a couple of unique gifts just as other female Drakon have, one of which helps her tremendously in her journey, the other which only adds to her stress and dispair – she’s able to communicate with the dead. And it is during her investigation that she begins to “see” Lord Rhys Langford, a younger son of the village Alpha.

Rhys is also sent to garner information about the dragon hunters and has been missing for some time. He and Zoe were childhood friends for a while, but as young people are wont to do, they each went their own way as they grew up, Rhys living the high life of a royal and Zoe remaining in her staid life in the village.

But seeing Rhys as she now does, Zoe begins to get to know him again, though she can’t say whether he still lives or not, and the odds are certainly not with him. Rhys also takes another look at the grown-up version of the girl he was sweet on years ago, and he definitely sees something  more than he did before.

The way Ms. Abe brings Rhys into the story, the way we get to know him in his “ghost”-like state, the description of the man/beast form he’s been left in when found is all so fascinating. She does a wonderful job.

It is Zoe, however, who is the star of this book. Though nearly a second-class citizen of Darkfrith, she, like all the Drakon women, has a hidden independence, steel for a backbone, and jaw-dropping courage as all admired women through the ages have had. Of course, her gifts help a lot and she’s ruthless when using them.

This is a very satisfying series for the paranormal fan in me. Ms. Abe’s writing is so lyrical you find you’re halfway through the book before you realize it. The stories and the characters, friend or foe, are captivating.

Do yourself a favor and pick these books up as soon as possible. You’re in for a spellbinding time.

Grade: A

Summary:

Something Dark is coiled around your heart.

Something scaled and glistening, and ferociously beautiful. It has been with you all your days and nights, all your years, in all your thoughts, shaping every single movement: your hands, your lips, your respiration.

It lives because you live. It lives because magic is real.

You are a dragon.

Drákon.

The lush green shire of Darkfrith, England hides a sparkling secret: a tribe of shapeshifting creatures who have the ability to Turn from human to smoke to dragon. Fierce, lovely, and dangerous, they’ve lived for centuries disguised as people, undetected by the human beings surrounding them. Until now.

The sanf inimicus, human dragon hunters, have found the shire. And now members of the tribe are going missing, one by one: a little girl. A devoted fiancé. And the reckless, handsome youngest son of the Alpha of the drákon: Lord Rhys Langford.

Zoe Lane is only the village seamstress. Her intellect and ice-cold beauty has left her isolated even amid her own kind. Her final chance to fit in among the tribe was the promise of marriage to Hayden James, a loyal drákon scout sent out into the world to help battle the sanf.

When Hayden vanishes without word, Zoe at last lets loose the Gifts she’s kept hidden from her clan: the power to Turn invisible. The ability to see ghosts in glass, to hear the voices of the dead. To read thoughts.

She’s determined to find her fiancé and bring him home again if she can. But when she reaches glittering, simmering eighteenth century Paris, she discovers the ghost who haunts her every move isn’t Hayden, but Rhys.

Her childhood love.

Rhys’s world has gone gray and thin; he isn’t even certain if he’s alive or dead. His existence is focused solely around Zoe, the only spark of color and true life left to him. Protecting her is going require all of his drákon skill—even as a ghost—because she’s determined to strike a blow against the sanf they won’t soon forget.

She’s his last lifeline to the living world. And he’s the one drákon who ever touched her heart.

Only together can they discover the true fate of their kind, and save them all from the traitor in their midst who would destroy them in a heartbeat….

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series: