Behind the Dragon's Veil by Christina Jolly

This book greatly confused me. I felt like I was reading a fantasy sci-fi. (Though in all fairness I selected it based on its qualifier Steampunk Fantasy.) It seemed like I was reading a book with no shelf to call home.

Andrandria is a country of kings and queens and knights. The main villain is an evil sorcerer. The landscape is pictorial. And there are dragons! Totally high fantasy. 

BUT--those dragons are inter-dimensional beings that travel through space and time. That weaponry? Futuristic and sci-fi for sure.

Oh, and let's just throw in some steampunk airships and automatons for the giggles.

The thing is--it worked. The elements all managed to jive together harmoniously. All the genres were living in one big, happy world together.

I just wish I could say the same for the writing continuity. The first half of the novel was really polished. The author pulled out all the stops on using antiquated verbs to really capture that intellectual feel.

However, the second half seemed like it had never seen the editor and suddenly had profanity out of no real necessity. I was confounded.

The ending also had an overload of "but wait, there's more" twists (which really weren't surprising). It was overall a very perplexing emotional state while reading, and I'm still not sure if the story was strong enough to keep me reading the series. Time will tell when the next book is published.

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