I was lucky enough to read the first book in the prequel series to this one a few months ago, so I was so excited to get the chance to read this book too! Right from the beginning I was hooked in to the story, I found Claire a funny character who was easy to relate to in many ways. I could really feel myself empathising with her and the struggles of her journey thanks to the author's excellent writing. I also liked the way that the chapters weren't all written from the same characters point of view, the way they focus skipped around made the story seem much more lifelike for me. Plus, I adored all the little side romances, so much so that I was wishing that I could read whole books focused around those characters too! Overall, this was a great read, and I can't wait to read more from Melissa Mitchell.

I really liked this book. I enjoyed the storyline and think that it has great potential to be a fantastic series.

I think that the main female character - Claire - is a bit childish and refuses to learn. She is also very dismissive of the culture of the country that she finds herself in.

I found that the middle of the book was somewhat meandering about the place, but I hope that the payoff for that will come in the following books.

All in all - a really good read and I would definitely recommend and will be looking for the next one in the series.

I really liked this book. After reading For the Crown by the same author, I wanted this book as soon as I saw it on Netgalley. Thankfully I got it, and it put For the Crown to shame. While For the Crown really focused on romance, this book went into full epic fantasy mode. As a fantasy lover, that shift is what made me love this book.

Talon the Black follows Claire, a girl from Indiana who's life is turned upside down when a dragon falls into her backyard. After he turns into a man, he tells her all about his world, Dragonwall, and the challenges it is soon to face. Forced to travel to Dragonwall, she soon meets King Talon, and discovers that fate has more in store for her than simply living in Indiana.

To be honest, when I picked this up, I wasn't expecting to be amazed. I expected a romance I'd enjoy, but not love. So let's just say I was very surprised when this book had an action driven plot. Don't get me wrong, this book definitely had romances. They were just laid back, and the main one promises to be slow burn. (almost too slow, I need these characters to get together!)

I really loved the characters in this, especially Cyrus. I get that the whole "medieval knight transfers to modern times" idea is a bit overused, but I love it anyway. I was constantly laughing for the first part of this, Cyrus's fascination with the "magic" was just great. As for Claire, I did find her a bit over dramatic at times, but I still really liked her. Talon, on the other hand, I'm super interested in him! I'm desperate for him to get put in the spotlight, and for more character development!

You can definitely read this book without having read For the Crown, but I think I enjoyed this a lot more because I had read it. For the Crown really introduced the world and its customs, so this book didn't have to. I think I would've spent a lot of this book very confused if I hadn't read it. That being said, don't shy away from this because you haven't read it, all of the history is still explained and introduced.

Full of dragons, and action, I'd definitely recommend this book! I'm always looking for fantasy worlds with tons of dragons, and this book definitely fulfilled my wishes!

For the Crown review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3522066319?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Thanks to Meliss Mitchel and Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was an easy read! I blew right through it. I enjoyed this so much. The writing style was flawless! I love stories like this. It definitely left me wanting more!

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

Hole. Lee. Moly.
Before I even finished reading the first paragraph of this book, I knew the story was going to sweep me away. And I was right! I tried so hard to savor it but I just couldn’t. I devoured this book. Melissa Mitchell is a new author for me and has quickly become one of my favorites. This book has magic, dragons, sprites, an evil sorcerer, and much more. Mitchell does a great job of world building by bringing in multiple POVs and building stories upon stories by introducing new characters with tales of their own. All of it is masterfully woven together and brings us back to Claire and those around her.
Claire is a heroine that is easy to root for. Getting to know Dragonwall through her eyes and those around her was so much fun - almost as much fun as getting to know those in the King’s Shield. This book has adventure at every turn and is loaded down with intrigue for what happens next. I quickly fell in love with Dragonwall. After reading this book I immediately purchased the second one and finished it in a little over a day. Talon the Black is the first in a series of seven books and I am so excited to read the others. I highly recommend this series for Sarah J. Maas, Jennifer Armentrout, and fantasy fans.
Thank you Netgalley for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fantasy meets Real World! This book is truly a phenomenal written story of a dragon who turns into a man! He flys thru a Portal and Claire a girl who loves Fantasy and just is at odds in her life right now. Sees something land in the field and when she gets their its an injured man.

What an amazing adventure is about to take place for this young woman. She makes an Unbreakable Promise and her new world is to become this Kingdom that she only dreamed about and read about in books that she has craved for all her life!

King Talon is the man that Claire has to assist and he is no ordinary man. He is another shifter that has powers to be a dragon and protects his DragonWall Kingdom. His borders are being attacked, but his people want him to marry and continue his lineage by securing a heir.
Claire has to come before the King and it is a battle of wits and egos that hinder their friendship.

This series is going to be as magical and magnificent as some of the other popular ones! I felt as though I was in the land of dragons because the author made it so real. The characters flowed and I never once wanted to put down the book! I can’t wait to get the next one!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a great fantasy series!

I received an advanced copy from NetGalley and these are my willingly given thoughts and opinions.

I wanted to love this book but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. Not even a little. I felt like I was thrown head first into this world and given multiple POVs that I did not care about. The characters seemed one-dimensional and the dialogues were overly simple. Most of the time the writing felt rushed but at the same time the pace felt slow.

I don’t know, this book just wasn’t for me, I guess. If I were a 15 year-old and new to YA I may have enjoyed it more.

Did not finish at 2%.
This needs major work. The paragraphing is odd and does now flow, and the writing is middle grade. The author needs to review and rework the novel, and hire beta readers, editors and publishers that will be strict and pick up on the poor syntax, grammar and flow.
My advice is to treat this as a first draft and surrender it to a truly merciless editor.
Not yet publishable.

Since I usually find myself waking up around 7 every morning I try to go to bed at a decent hour. This usually involves me heading to bed around 10 and then falling asleep around 11:30. This did not happen tonight. Instead, It is currently 2:30 am and I am wide awake and in dire need to find out if any of my predictions are correct! Thankfully, Ryer the Gold is available but I'm hoping that Mitchell has the third book coming soon because I don't think that I can wait too long! The plot flowed wonderfully and I found all of the characters to be compelling no matter how little time we spend with them so far. I'm eager to return to Dragonwall and find out what happens next!

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for this free copy which I received in return for an honest review.

"Talon the Black" by Melissa Mitchell thrusts Claire into a fantasy world where wild dragons threaten a 50 000 year old peace.

The cover immediately drew me in and, after reading the blurb, I had to get my hands on it. Mitchell constructs a detailed world with a very long history, where the Drengr, half dragons-half humans, rule Dragonwall and protect its human citizens, while living along side goblins, dwarves, and Sprites. Mitchell's world is bigger than life and that really comes across through Claire who looks at it all in amazement. It's also worth noting that Mitchell doesn’t hesitate to delve into the nitty gritty of keeping a castle running; unlike most novels, Mitchell doesn't shy away from topics like chamber pots and menstruation.

Melissa Mitchell also pays close attention to her plot. "Talon the Black" has two distinct parts that symbolise Claire's transition into her role at Dragonwall. The first part is largely character exposition, with the audience getting to know Claire, Cyrus, and Dragonwall, before Claire is thrust into court politics that threaten her life. On the whole, it was a good plot, I found myself enjoying it more as all the elements came together towards the end of the book.
However the pacing wasn't ideal and the constant jumps between POVs and locations were hard to keep up with. While they added to a general understanding of the story or the circumstances that led to the book's events, they distracted from the plot, even dragging it down at points.

Michell's writing also didn't help. It's very wordy, especially when it comes to characters from Dragonwall. The way they speak is meant to recall older times, but it ends up being tedious to read through, if incomprehensible at times, Since certain Dragonwall characters have their own POV, it makes getting through whole chapters a challenge, to the point where I would skip paragraphs at times without missing anything major. As the book goes on, this became less noticeable, put I didn't appreciate having to push through half of it before that point (I even considered putting it down more than once).

Another problem I had with a book was the heteronormativity of it all. In a world with shapeshifting dragons, relying on the human male-female binary bugged me, especially given the disadvantageous position women are placed in. Claire's choices are frequently ignored or overruled, as are other women's in the novel, and having one side character raise the issue doesn't make up for the tone set by the other instances. On top of that, the Drengr are always men and their riders always women through some predetermined mating bond, and the women are bound to giving the Drengr one heir, one side character even goes so far as to classify the riders as broodmares upon learning this. To top it all off, the process of finding a mate includes the women in the kingdom lining up to touch dragons and form a bond when they're 15 because that's around the time they become "women" aka get their periods. Because the drengr are slow to age, this can give age gaps such as 32-15 which was unpleasant to read about to say the least.

Honestly, Melissa Mitchell's action packed plot and interesting worldbuilding didn’t make up for the "Talon the Black's" pitfalls and, as such, I won't be continuing with the series.

I received an advanced reader's copy of Talon the Black (The Dragonwall Series Book 1) by Melissa Mitchell from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am a huge fan of fantasy/romance involving dragons so I was excited to read this novel. Unfortunately, it hit me as just okay (not great, but not horrible).

The summary was intriguing, but the pacing was uneven. It seemed rather bland for long stretches then a too-quick action scene smooshed in rather than introduction to the novel's universe and characters, while building to action and moving the plot forward. It was just sort of disjointed.

For the characters, the protagonist Claire Evans was also just okay. The author crafted an interesting character at the start, but didn't carry it through with cohesive actions/reactions. Her love interest, Talon, was rather one dimensional and it just made him seem flat. I just couldn't get behind either one.

I heard “dragons” and came running. And then I DNFed it.

By the looks of it, I’m the only one who didn’t like this book. Seeing the reviews on goodreads I'm tempted to give it another chance some other time. It’s not entirely that I didn’t like it, but I just couldn’t get into it .

This story begins in Indiana, where 22 year-old Claire is driving back home at 3am and, to her utter astonishment, sees a dragon fall from the sky and pretty much land in her backyard (which happens to be a corn field). When she gets there, all she sees is a wounded, bleeding and unconscious man lying in the middle of a dragon-sized crater. After saving him, she learns his name is Cyrus and he comes from a land called Dragonwall. Oh, and he’s a Drengr, a dragon that can shape-shift into a human.

You know those movies when a knight from medieval times somehow time-travels to modern day? Well that’s what happens here. Cyrus tells Claire everything about Dragonwall, the threats they face and how he ended up in her world, all while trying to wrap his head around how a TV works. Then he dies, but not before making Claire vow to help his world and tell no one but the king everything he told her. A second after Cyrus dies, his Drengr friends show up to rescue him (too late) and take Claire with them. So that’s how a girl from Indiana ends up in Dragonwall and the rest of her nowhere-girl-turns-heroine-and-probably-falls-in-love story happens, I didn’t get that far in.

I was 10% in when I started thinking about DNFing it. I thought it was too soon, so I skimmed through it until 25-30% to give it a chance to hook me, but it didn’t. I wanted to love this story but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. Not even a little. I felt like I was thrown head first into this world and given multiple POVs that I did not care about. The characters seemed one-dimensional and the dialogues were overly simple. Most of the time the writing felt rushed but at the same time the pace felt slow.

The premise isn't bad, I'm all in for shape-shifting dragons. I don’t know, this book just wasn’t for me, I guess. If I were a 15 year-old and new to YA I may have enjoyed it more.

The moment I stepped into Dragonwall I knew I was going to be thoroughly invested in this series.
From the second Claire wakes up to a hungry dragon man—the very same she just rescued—running naked in her yard after her mother’s chickens, the book and its characters endeared themselves to me. But of all the many colorful personalities and especially the fiercely loyal Drengr, I felt my heart constrict a little more for Talon, the scarred king of Dragonwall. Although I did want to tear my hair out at some points and boot him in his dragon hide for being so intractable and sometimes even ruthless.
The beauty of Dragonwall’s many magical denizens is that they’re all fallible and authentic, and each is as distinct as a dragon would be from a goblin; or a prince from a pirate.
The main player, though, is Claire Evans, whose destiny it is to leave all she knows for the archaic world of Dragonwall to deliver a message and keep a promise. And to discover that she’s been invested with a little more than just some precious cargo; she’s got a strange new ability! Little does she know, however, that she’s about to butt heads with the king himself and be plunged into castle intrigues and harrowing politics. All while a greater force of evil—long thought to be extinct—begins to stir at the darkest fringes of Dragonwall.
An addictive high fantasy adventure that held place of pride on my bedside table while I gorged myself on dragons, goblins, elves, and magic.

I have mixed feelings about this book. What really drew me to this book was that it had dragons. The synapse to the book made it sound really interesting. In reading the first few chapters it held my attention, then there were other times I felt the story was dragging on and on. At times the main character, Claire, was a great strong female lead with a snarky attitude. The only thing that didn't make sense was Claire's ability to take everything that dealt with dragons and Dragonwall so easily. It seemed a bit off since she was basically kidnapped from her own world, but at the same time went willingly with her captors. The fact the she started to make friends with her captors didn't sit well either; especially when they wanted to kill her for a crime she didn't commit without any evidence. There were too many holes throughout the story and I could guess to easily what was going to happen next.