By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Emmeline Lovel’s Fantasy Romance, The Promise of Love, the first book in the Promise of a Dragonblood series reveals a character that has a lot of promise but has extremely questionable plot points.
In a world where people are judged by their magical abilities, Princess Mira is an outlier. One of three sisters, she is magically resistant. She can telepathically communicate with dragons but she keeps that a secret from everyone around her. She is the victim of bullying, threats, and condescension. She has a chance meeting with a stranger who is revealed to be Walderon, prince of a neighboring kingdom and the two develop an attraction which is hampered by Walderon’s arrangement with Mira’s sister. There is also a conspiracy unfolding within the kingdoms and Mira finds that she, her friends, family, and way of life are in danger.
Mira is a heroine surrounded by people who can do fantastic things. That makes her feel out of place and bland compared to others. She often uses attributes like observation, intelligence, courage, and resilience that most take for granted. It could be a story about someone discovering her actual talents and strengths could be her power and that she doesn't need magic to be a hero.
However this theme is not as cut and dry as it should be. She has two attributes that set her apart from others. One is that she is magically resistant. She is unable to use magic but she is also unable to receive magic. Ironically, this makes her invincible from magical attacks, a gift that is eventually used to a benefit but takes some time for others to recognize it.
One can look at Mira’s magical resilience as a metaphor for disabilities but only up to a point. Her family tries to keep her in hiding so she doesn't get hurt. Her peers and sometimes relatives mock and disregard her. Some think that she can be cured. She even becomes swayed by a manipulator who uses her uniqueness to their advantage. These are all things that people with disabilities have to endure.
But this theme is muted by one simple glaring fact. Mira actually has a magical ability but is unwilling to share it with others. Her telepathic communications with dragons show strong mental and emotional connections and animal communications. She explains why she doesn't share her talent but it is not explained clearly enough and makes the rest of the book ring hollow.
Perhaps one of the issues that I have is that her telepathic abilities seem to be ongoing. She didn't just discover them. There is no sudden hearing of the voices, being shown her new abilities or learning the advantages and limitations. Her unwillingness to share them could be depicted as her just learning about them. She's new at this and isn't certain whether she is crazy or not. Her secret keeping could be reframed out of uncertainty and self-preservation.
Instead, Mira has had them for a long time, for years in fact. Hiding and never mentioning them especially when there are times that it could help her family make her seem like an idiot at best and selfish at worst.
There are also other issues. She is in a love triangle with Walderon and her sister which gets over-explained and repetitive. The manipulative character is so obvious from the word go that their betrayal leads to sighs and eye rolls rather than opened agape mouths and wide eyed surprised expressions.
For a Fantasy novel, this needs more than just promise to make it dearly loved.
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