As the youngest in the family and prone to debilitating headaches, Prince Bellamy has always been coddled by his family. When his ship is wreaked in enemy territory, Bell quickly finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and taken prisoner. Knowing his identity of as the youngest prince of Silaise would make everything worse, he claims to be a wandering minstrel when asked. His fellow prisoner likewise claims to be a farmer, though in reality Rakos Tem is a dragonrider. All he wants is his dragon back and out of politics. But when Bellamy asks for help getting home, Rakos eventually agrees. The two of them soon forge a partnership that slips into something more but with secrets between them and enemies circling, what sort of future the pair has is up in the air.
While this was a solid romance, the main characters didn’t grab the way they did in the first book. Which is really too bad because there’s a lot to like in this one. More of the world gets explored, and I really loved the way the “secret identity revealed” angle was handled. The only thing keeping this book from being a four star read is that I didn’t enjoy Bell and Rakos as much as I liked Whisper and Julian. They’re both a little too nice if that makes any sense. They work very well as a couple together, and there’s nothing wrong with either of them, but I wasn’t quite as invested in the pair of them as I was with Julian and Whisper. Still, it was a pretty satisfying read, and the end of the book did set up the third book in the series. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with that. Three out of five stars.
CBR15 Bingo: Take Flight – They ride on a dragon, and dragonriders are a big thing in the world.