Indiana Jones meets The Mummy only it's medieval and the protagonists are dragons.

If I had quibbles with this one, it's that the h seems to have a chip on her shoulder due to her not being One of Them so to speak - while it is never addressed, it seems certain her father was the ancient and far less human (and thus less empathetic) dragon who was killed in the previous book. I wouldn't find it as vaguely annoying if she wasn't 200 years old or so. That's a long time to not get over it. I also wonder where she's been over the years before she married a ship's captain. She didn't say... She obviously wasn't around the clan.

Anyway... our H is sent on a Quest to find a mighty power source that might ensure that England leave Scotland alone. He finds his way to a ship...somewhere...in France I think. Why France is never explained...or it's explained only in the sense that he feels it less likely that someone in England will hear of it. And they set sail - to some mythical island west of England. Some mythical island that has... what is identified as an elk but sounds more like a moose. Must have been further west than Greenland or Iceland then. In any case, they do find the island, or rather, they get close enough to the island for said power source to find them. Much adventure and errr...interesting times...later, they hunt down said power source and deal with it.

And as with the previous book, it ends with the H/h riding off into the sunset, in this case, sailing.

Well... it made up for the lacking in book 1 - there was an actual story here. That said, one dislikes reading of everyone trying to foist their daughter on the H who is sleeping with the h at that point. Doesn't help much that the h seemed ok with it and even considered a tumble with some fae nobleman.

Beyond that, maybe I missed something at the beginning but it was unclear as to whether the H's quest had ended at the end of the book.

And that lord's son's age went from 14 to 12, then back again.

Oh, the story is that the h is the H's bodyguard as he goes to various allies with centers of power nearby and performs rituals of some sort. Along the way, there's several attempts on his life - poisoning, mercenary, and...something from beyond... before a last run-in with what turns out to be an ancient dragon.

And...we're back to meh... No, actually we're reduced to staring at the ceiling and wondering why.

So the H - introduced somewhere in Justice's book (and why was the leader given a book so damned early in the series? That's not how you keep people motivated to follow a series.) volunteered to work on the task force. Yay. Ummmm...why was he moved off the base? And he's moved into the daughter of the task force's leader's house....without asking her first. Now... I must note that it seems like every human male in the series has the same name - Tim, or was it Ted this time. Not sure, but there haven't been many named and there's a distinct lack of variety here. For a task force leader who gives the impression of being paranoid and domineering, he sure doesn't live like it. I mean; you'd think the house would be so secure a mouse would have a hard time sneaking in. People break in, kidnap the H and the daughter, AKA the h, and they find themselves in a hidden lab. Because of course they did.

The h is inconsistent - she's arguing with her dad in the beginning, and you get this mental image of a strong woman. But then she's terrified at the break-in, freaking misses even though the bad guy was 3' in front of her, never uses the martial arts she's supposedly trained in. Later, she decides they aren't going to be rescued because oh nos; it's been 24 hours since they were grabbed, and concocts this elaborate plan that he can stop trying to protect her and use her as a weapon by tossing her at the guards. After they are rescued, because they were tracked to the general vicinity by virtue of the tracker, but had to be sniffed out to find the exact location (apparently neither one thought about the possibility that the kidnappers didn't have a sign out front "bad guys here!!"), she allows her dad to keep her home before deciding she "needs a vacation" and leaves...because she's just realized she's now knocked up. I suppose the spinelessness after that point could be attributed to hormones but you know, when you're presented with the reality that the H has a date the night he's just found out he's gonna be a dad, the reaction should be a hard kick to the shins *right then*, followed by a scene.

The H though...has a severe case of hoof-in-mouth disease. He keeps blundering by fretting that he almost lost control, which wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't informed the h right off the bat that humans were too fragile for his tastes. That, coupled with the would-be date reminding him when he needed to pick her up, gave the h a heck of an inferiority complex...or perhaps made a preexisting inferiority complex worse (she'd been married before, to a guy who was after her grandpa's money, and made her feel inadequate).

Other things - the manipulations of others... First there was the shrink (and do Drs refer to shrinks as such...ever?)being manipulated (off page apparently, and only hours after the rescue...really?!) into saying he needs to stay away from her, then there was Trisha (who I found myself wanting to punch in the face) who gave her the morning after pills without telling her what they were. Later - after they figure out she's preggers, there's the manipulations to get her and the H together.

And lastly, there's the conversation with Breeze - the would-be date - where it's revealed that he'd been obsessed with getting the h knocked up so he could keep her, and the two of them had discussions about this. If she knew he was obsessed with a human female (which would indicate imprinting and mating), why would she ever press him for a date? Something not right with that.

3.5 I think. I mean; it wasn't bad but... The H spent the better part of the book variously hiding his relationship with the heroine, or being a dog-in-a-manger about her after she decided she'd had enough and dumped him. It seemed to take him forever to realize that she was his mate, and then he wasn't willing to claim her. Why? Because as the face of the NS, he didn't feel he could/should take a human as a mate.

The h...is no slouch, no helpless female. Her dad is the senator who has been behind all the rescues and got her the position she holds. She assists in rescuing the "gift" females from various donors' possession. We run into her as she's attempting to fight off a couple of NS males who have human issues. The H comes to her rescue. Over the course of the book she...assists in the rescue of a "gift", kills several humans who were guarding said "gift", and, after she's more or less forced the H's hand by threatening to leave the base completely, several NS who have objections to a leader who has mated a human.

Amusingly, the senator is perfectly happy to have the H as a son-in-law so that excuse for not claiming her was bull...

2 more books to go, then a decision must be made - do I want to read Tiger and Moon's stories enough to acquire the rest of the series? I suppose I could just pick those two up

My eyes rolled so hard I think I got motion sickness.

The dialong wasn't quite as weird but still not exactly natural. it was the H. I get that he was more "other" than most but sheesh; he was like, half a dozen cartoon characters rolled into one. First there was the "mine, mine, mine" bit in the first chapter when, after he scared the crap out of the h, he grabbed her and took her to his bedroom. Then there was the inability to understand the word "no", the h's "oh alright then" when she figured out it was going to happen whether she was on board or not. (as an aside, forced seduction works better in historicals for me as there isn't any law against the alternative, which it beats by a landslide. This isn't, so I'm...not entirely comfortable with this scene.)

And after she cold-cocks him, everyone assuming he forced her (well.... that was a dubious "consent" there, but whatever), goes back to her old life (uhh...), gets kidnapped..

And he's either filled with mindless rage (nearly), or "mine!" during the entirety of the rescue.

And he presses her sore, abused person for sex after they get back to the base they live on.

Then she gets kidnapped *again* because the NS lawyer really is a dirtbag and has been passing on info about them. This of course leads to the discovery that at least one lab wasn't discovered...yet.

Slightly annoyed here that of the 3 books I actually have left of the series, only one is a H I've heard of, and of the other 2 that I don't have, only one is. Hundreds of these people, only a few named, and instead of using those for Hs, she conjured up new ones.