Review: Trueflame – Vanessa Ricci-Thode

Genre: Fantasy

Reviewer: Linda, Paranormal Romance Guild

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About The Book

Neesha doesn’t care about the affairs of dragons. All she wants is to cultivate her unprecedented pyromantic power, but chafes against her mother’s reputation as a ground-breaking dragon whisperer and against a regressive society that expects her to marry. Escaping not only her mother’s judgement but the attention of family-approved suitors proves difficult, especially when an unplanned pregnancy drastically narrows Neesha’s options and sets a tight deadline for fulfilling her dream of being accepted to the Wizards Guild before motherhood sidelines her.

Just when she thinks she can take no more, her mother’s old foe returns for revenge against her entire family, bringing river monsters, a threat to the dragon city, and tough choices that hold the fate of her city—especially her unborn child—in jeopardy.

She’s going to have to start caring about the dragons and earn their trust in order to succeed.

Trueflame is about a salty bi woman fighting the patriarchy, and how brilliant women are destroyed by the shackles of expectation in a regressive society.

The Review

When I was given this book to review, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. It’s the second book in the series, and I hadn’t read the first one. But I was in for a surprise – the author starts the book with a full synopsis of book one. After reading the synopsis, I began book two with enough knowledge to dive right into the story and know the characters and who and what they were.

Dionelle now has three children: two boys, Bly and Breen, and her daughter Neesha, who she was pregnant with in book one. The events that occurred resulted in Neesha being a fireborn, with powers stronger than her mother. Unfortunately, in addition to Neesha’s fire powers, she grew to have a defiant attitude. Neesha’s relationship with her parents is strained and she resents being compared to her mother and her dead aunt, who caused trouble for everyone.

Neesha is studying to get into the Guild, but drinking and sex seemed to take precedence. Even though her mother is the Dragon Whisperer and Neesha grew up around them, she has decided she doesn’t care about them. Then again, she doesn’t seem to care about anything. Her troubled relationship with her parents gets to the point of no return when she finds out that she is pregnant. Her father stops speaking to her, and she is thrown out of her home. She has embarrassed her family, and no one wants her. She doesn’t want a husband in any case If she marries, she wants it to be with a woman.

Marrying would take the stigma of being unwed and pregnant away, and she would once again be accepted into society. Neesha could care less. She is living with her grandmother, and when she has her baby and must leave, she will take care of the child by herself.

Everything changes when an old enemy, Draxli Dunham, resurfaces with an army behind him. Draxli was exiled and his wife was executed for treason, so he wants revenge, and he wants to return to power.

With aquamancers and rogue dragons working on his behalf, Draxli has convinced people that the dragons are responsible for the drought and loss of crops. When the aquamancers bring water, he is considered a hero. Determined to destroy Pasdale and all the inhabitants, he causes uncontrollable rains that start a flood, making travel impossible and causing deaths. Neesha finally realizes what’s happening, and the danger the dragons and her town are in.

Neesha knows that her fire powers are strong, and she convinces everyone that she can end the floods by calling forth the fire demons. Whether she can stop Draxli, save the dragons and Pasdale, and give birth to a healthy baby, I will leave for you to find out.

I recommend Trueflame and would suggest reading book one first. This book is full of amazing characters, betrayals, secrets, and surprises – a war between water and fire. Wow.

Four stars.

The Reviewer

I am an avid reader the mother of 3 sons and grandmother to seven grandchildren. Since retiring I have been doing more reading while volunteering as a CASA worker. CASA is an organization that works with the family court system to ensure that children are in the best living situation. There are way too many children that get overlooked in the foster care system and I visit homes and make visits to the parents. I was born and raised in New York and my husband of 50 years and I live in Upstate New York.

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Summary: Short Synopsis Agata Rosso, a once-mighty yet now prematurely aged European witch, believes that the special gifts in a young girl named Lía Munro can restore youth and vitality both to herself and her bedridden husband. She sets a deadly plan in motion to capture and use Lía—but will the girl have enough power to protect herself, plus the father she loves so much? Outline 1940 in a small farming region, and children have disappeared from the land. Local families—old-time Australians and newer European arrivals—know what to do about packs of wild, scavenging dogs in the forests, but they seem to have no way of finding children whose very bones have vanished from the earth. They also don’t know how to deal with the strange couple Mr and Mrs Rosso, who might just hold the key to everything—including the miraculous breaking of a ten-year drought. Now it’s 1977 and the wider city is growing, encroaching into these outlying communities and turning pristine farmlands into new housing estates. Paul Munro and his daughter, Lía, have arrived to inspect an available property; it’s the secluded hillside old home of the Rossos. Paul and his wife—who has recently died—grew up around the area. Paul wants to show Lía the countryside of his early years, but when Lía experiences Rosso House for the first time its undeniable spell and the spirits it hides makes her understand that this is the place she really wants to be. Just turning sixteen, grieving the loss of her mother, experiencing a spiritual awakening she doesn’t understand, Lía loves the quiet isolation and rural beauty that Rosso House and its land has to offer. At first her new life with her father seems idyllic, yet she’s soon drawn into committing a terrible act of mercy. At the same time Paul meets the beautiful and enigmatic Candela, only to become ensnared in the evils that hold her and her baby captive. The connection between Lía’s suffering and Candela’s troubles might just be the wizened old witch, Agata Rosso. Constantly searching for a way to restore her youth and her husband’s powers, Agata soon discovers just how useful Lía could be. She sends the most ruthless of men to capture her; in parallel, the terrifying man-wolf-father of Candela’s baby will do anything to get his son back. Lía desperately needs her father’s help; Candela is trying to escape a world of violence; both women are soon confronted by the very definition of evil. Will they find help from others, or is there some deeper answer within themselves? The shadow-worlds of ancient evil and modern corruption collide in this supernatural thriller, blending past and present, history and fiction, into a mesmerising adventure.