Flying Blind
Flying Blind by Deborah Cooke
The Dragon Diaries #1
Zoë Sorensson is perfectly normal, except she's been told she's destined for great things. Zoë's the one female dragon shapeshifter of her kind. But Zoë is at the bottom of the class when it comes to being Pyr and her powers are AWOL, so she's sent to a Pyr boot camp.
Zoë quickly realizes that she has to master her powers yesterday, because the Pyr are in danger and boot camp is a trap. The Mages want to eliminate all shifters and the Pyr are next in line-unless Zoë and her friends can work together and save their own kind.
Zoë quickly realizes that she has to master her powers yesterday, because the Pyr are in danger and boot camp is a trap. The Mages want to eliminate all shifters and the Pyr are next in line-unless Zoë and her friends can work together and save their own kind.
Zoe has always known she would be special, being the only female Pyr, or dragonshifter. However, she wishes her specialness would hurry itself along as she is drastically behind all of her male counterparts. In hopes of hurrying things along for her, Zoe's father sends her to the Pyr's boot camp. However, things are not as they seem as boot camp turns out to be a giant trap. More than ever, Zoe will need to learn to believe in herself, because the alternative may just mean the end of her kind.
The world behind Flying Blind was by far the best part of the book. The world is set a little in the future, but not too far that it felt overly sci-fi. Also, the supernatural was semi-open to the rest of humanity. In other words, humans are aware that there are dragons (Pyr), but do not know them in their human forms. Only a select few know any Pyr in either form as the group stays very secretive for their own protection. Apparently they were nearly eradicated by slayers many years ago, and now are overly cautious. Of course this does make things a little interesting between the younger and older generations as they both have different ideas about things. Since the slayers had been eliminated before the younger generation was born, they don't feel the need to hide. But of course the older Pyr remember what it was to be hunted. I have a feeling there will be a lot more tension and battles of wills as the younger Pyr start to come into their positions of power. They may just shake things up.
As much as I enjoyed the concept behind the world and the secondary characters, unfortunately the narrator drove me batty. She's fifteen but acts more like a 12 year old (or younger) with their first crush. She is incredibly whiny about a whole slew of things, but even that could have been overlooked due to the huge burden placed on her shoulders by being the only female Pyr. My biggest problem was the way she behaved about the boys she was mooning over. If they even looked at her she blushed from head to toe. Then there is the extreme hatred and jealousy of a character who didn't deserve it, just because this girl was interested in the Pyr of Zoe's affection. What make the situation worse was that Zoe knows that Pyr can only "mate" with humans, yet she somehow overlooked that fact for most of the book. Then all of a sudden she gets a clue and realizes "Hey, this couldn't work," and then her attention turns to a guy in his twenties. To be honest age differences do not really bother me in books as long as the younger character is very mature for their age, but that definitely was not case here.
I'll be honest that I didn't think I was going to be able to get through this book. At 25% of the way in I was ready to throw in the towel, but decided to hang on a little longer. I'm glad I did, as things started to pick up and Zoe's immaturity wasn't grating on my nerves as bad. In all honesty, Zoe did do a fair amount of maturing and waking up to her own behavior in Flying Blind, so I do have hopes for the next installment. As I said earlier, the world behind the story is what really made the book, and since the Paranormal YA genre hasn't been over saturated with dragon shifter books, Flying Blind was a very fresh read. I'm also interested in checking out the author's other books that center around the adults in the book as it would be great to see their back stories.
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Flying Blind: The Dragon Diaries
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