The Dragon’s Promise | Book 2 of Six Crimson Cranes | ARC Review

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

 Book: The Dragon’s Promise (Six Crimson Cranes 2) by Elizabeth Lim
Release Date: August 30th 2022
Tags: Young Adult | Court Intriges | Dragons | Magic | Demons
Trigger/Content Warnings: Burned | Violence | Blood | Grief
Other books in this series I reviewed
Six Crimson Cranes

Princess Shiori made a deathbed promise to return the dragon’s pearl to its rightful owner, but keeping that promise is more dangerous than she ever imagined.

She must journey to the kingdom of dragons, navigate political intrigue among humans and dragons alike, fend off thieves who covet the pearl for themselves and will go to any lengths to get it, all while cultivating the appearance of a perfect princess to dissuade those who would see her burned at the stake for the magic that runs in her blood.

The pearl itself is no ordinary cargo; it thrums with malevolent power, jumping to Shiori’s aid one minute, and betraying her the next—threatening to shatter her family and sever the thread of fate that binds her to her true love, Takkan. It will take every ounce of strength Shiori can muster to defend the life and the love she’s fought so hard to win. 

As I look at some of the reviews for this sequel to Six Crimson Cranes and I realize that a lot of people aren’t quite as charmed with it as I was. That might be because I read this pretty close together and I didn’t have to wait like some people. And perhaps because my expectations were different.

If there is one thing that I have learned with fairytale type of books as the first book of a series is that the rest of the books in the series never really keep up unless they dive into other fairytales. So I knew I was not going to get that from this sequel. And that was okay. We get a deepening of the world by seeing the world of the dragons and other islands.

This book is perhaps a bit more plot driven than character driven than I would have liked but there were just a lot of things that still needed to be resolved and discovered. There was more room for other characters than just Shiori and Takkan, and at the end of the day I think that is important.

There was some shouting about a love triangle, and while I am one that is not a fan of those, nothing about it bothered me. It was clear from the start that Seryu had feelings for Shiori even if she didn’t see it herself. And it was also obvious that Shiori would never turn away from Takkan. So for me there was not a real love triangle. Shiori never gave Seryu false hope.

While we are on the subject of the dragons, aren’t they a bunch of backstabbing court nannies, my gosh. There doesn’t seem to be any fun reason to want to be apart of the dragon world if you constantly have to walk on your toes. But Seryu took a step in becoming his own self and I’m so proud of him.

Her brothers also seem to have grown during their time as cranes and even though we only get little bits and pieces it is still great to see the steps they are making. And I found the wizard entertaining but was sorry to see how little his role ended up being. He could have really helped Shiori since he knew more but of course all had to be done by her. I think that was a shame.

Regardless I enjoyed this duology for what it was and I can’t wait to see what Elizabeth Lim will bring us next.