Windward (S. Kaeth)

Windward
S. Kaeth
Hakea Media
Fiction, Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Palon gave up her life as an ordinary Rinarian when she was twelve years old and a dragon offered her the freedom of the skies. By becoming dragonbonded, mentally linked to the great dragon Windward to the point of absorbing many dragon traits such as hoarding, she enters a partnership that will only end in death, no longer able to return to life in her old village among ordinary humans without going insane in a very literal sense, but Palon accepts it gladly. Nothing could be better than soaring above many worlds, defending their herd beasts from predators and helping Windward keep well-groomed. She has a new family, the other dragonbonded humans of Windward's mountain nest... but, as with all family, things can be tense, the constant jockeying for status among the dragons translating to squabbles among their humans. But when push comes to shove, ultimately the bonds of nest and family win out - or so she's been led to believe.
With the eldest dragon Silver Spine in his final days, tensions are already high. Then Laetiran, bonded of Fired Sand, starts picking at an old rivalry with Palon and her mate Aturadin of Scorch Frost, spreading rumors and starting fights and always somehow making himself look like the offended party. When someone starts stealing from dragon hoards - an unheard-of offense - tensions through the nest only ratchet higher. Then the arrival of a reluctant hew bonded, Tebah, mere months before the winter torpor - a terrible time to form a new bond - throws more oil on the fire. And there's something very unusual about the crystal Palon found the last time she and Windward were out defending the herds. When stolen items are found in Palon and Aturadin's private hoards, everything explodes, threatening to destroy family bonds and the nest itself forever.

REVIEW: First off, this book does have a lot of potential, and a lot going for it. The symbiotic relationship of dragons and their bonded humans is interesting, with nods to McCaffrey's Pernese dragons and others, and the dragon culture and hierarchy are decently fleshed out and explored. These dragons are solidly dragons, not scaly puppies or outsized humans, with all the might and wonder and danger and otherness that implies. Unfortunately, the characters and story itself let that potential down, to the point where I spent far more of my reading time grinding my teeth than enjoying myself.
The characters, almost universally (barring the dragons, who have the excuse of not being human), are annoying, overreactive and stubborn and, frankly, somewhat stupid about how they handle nearly everything. Palon is the chief offender here, for all that she was the main character and I was stuck following her through the book. Second up would be Tebah, the girl who - despite generations of stories in their world about the unbreakable nature of a dragon's bond - stupidly agreed to a bond under false pretenses and acts like an utterly immature and petty jerk, never once acknowledging that she's the one to blame for her own mess. She even laughs as her dragon suffers. Her presence was probably supposed to be the author's way of walking a reader through the world of the dragonbonded, but instead it was just irritating, plus it was unnecessary as a walkthrough because Palon had already told me just about everything worth knowing. Then told me again. Then repeated it. This book would've been maybe half as long had Kaeth taken a needed machete to the constant repeating of what the reader already knew in ways that did not advance the plot or characters a single iota. As for the plot... it's, frankly, a mess of colliding ideas and tensions, too many and developed in too uneven a way to begin to resolve in a remotely satisfactory manner. Many of the characters' actions, frankly, do not make a lot of sense, driven by anger and spite and stubbornness, coming across as utterly immature across the board. Everyone knows Laetiran and Fired Sand are power-hungry jerks, yet suddenly their word is golden? Palon goes on and on about the bonds of family among the dragonbonded and how, down deep, they all love each other like kin, yet apparently they've hated her all along and consider her an unreliable hothead and have just been waiting for her to mess up? And then there are enemies of dragons (who?), and faeries, and other worlds, and something about the predatory walavaims (winged felids) acting unusually, and another nest that pokes its nose inexplicably into their business (over something that her own nest should've known or sensed, but didn't because plot hole), and the world's cruddiest dragonbonded "leader" who let things get this bad to begin with, and "investigations" that don't actually investigate, and dragons who have forgotten their own Dragon Law (and nobody keeps records? These dragons who claim to value the knowledge they accumulate over long generations of extra-long lifetimes, and the dragonbonded who also claim to value that knowledge, don't have a single, solitary record keeper on site?), and... and... All of this, packed full of characters I never connected with and often didn't care for, dragons excepted.
As I mentioned at the start, there's a lot of potential in Windward, and much that should be interesting. Unfortunately, the execution, the constant repetition in lieu of progress, the often-aggravating characters, and the seemingly haphazard collision of plotlines made it just too frustrating for even a flat Okay rating.

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