Book Review – The Treasure Keeper by Shana Abé

Author:  Shana Abé
Cover Artist:  Juliana Kolesova
Publisher:  Bantam Books
Binding:  Hardcover
Publication Date:  March 2009

Shana Abé’s drakón (read:  dragon) series is for people who read both fantasy and romance.  While the series does have an overarching plot of the drakón vs. their human hunters, the main focus of each book is the individual relationship developing between the hero and the heroine.  The books are thus correctly shelved in the romance section of most bookstores. The drakón are shapeshifters who can move between human, smoke, and dragon.  They are an insular clan living in wide-open secrecy in rural England.  The books are set during the mid- to late-1700s and conform to many standards of historical romance–basically, they are paranormal historical romances.  A couple key points to understanding the drakón as a people and as characters:  the females are for the most part unable to Turn out of their human form.  Gemstones and precious metals sing to the drakón and, in a high enough volume, can sometimes control them, drive them mad, or simply cause them to lose themselves in the song.  The tribe is ruled by an Alpha, who is somewhat answerable to the council who enforce the tribe’s restrictive laws; none of the tribe is allowed to leave their shire without permission, with death as the standard punishment for “running.” 

The Treasure Keeper is the 4^th book of a planned 5 for the series.  The first book in the series (The Smoke Thief) reads as a stand-alone novel.  The second book (The Dream Thief) starts the real plot of the series, when the youngest daughter of the couple from the first book sets off on a quest to find the Dreaming Diamond which can enslave the drakón, and finds a lost clan of other dragons in Eastern Europe.  The third book (Queen of Dragons) is about her oldest brother and his courtship of the foreign princess.  That book introduces the human hunters who seek to destroy the drakón, and at the end of the book the middle brother, Rhys, is captured by the hunters.

This book follows Rhys and the woman who ultimately comes to his rescue.

Zoe Lane is unlike the other drakón–she has unusual, unheard-of Gifts.  She cannot Turn, but she can become invisible, and she can read minds.  She sneaks out of the clan’s shire to search for her fiancé, the third (and most recent) emissary to the foreign clan to go missing.  She goes to his last known location, Paris, and begins her search for someone, anyone, who knows what happened to him.  What she finds instead is the ghost of Rhys Langford, who haunts her in mirrors and windows.  As they spend more time “together,” Zoe and Rhys both begin to regret his untimely death and the loss of what might have developed between them.  Until Zoe’s fiancé reappears, unharmed and with news that the human hunters are based in Paris and holding a drakón prisoner…a drakón who just might be Rhys Langford. 

The biggest revelation of the book is yet to come, however–the identity of the human hunters’ leader:  one of the drakón‘s own. 

I really liked this twist on the human hunters.  I have read a few paranormal romance series that have ridiculously well-informed human hunters who, because their ominous threat looms for no other reason than hatred, fear, and good research, seem more plot device than an organic danger in that world.  But in this case, with an embittered Other forming the society of hunters, the group seems more dynamic and more realistic.  I’m definitely looking forward to the final book in the series, to see how events play out.

In the meantime, thoughts on this most current book.  The Treasure Keeper is probably now my second-favorite in the series.  They’re all good, but The Dream Thief is heartbreakingly beautiful, and this one is, at least for me, a clear cut above the first and third books.  Mostly, I think, because the attraction between Zoe and Rhys seems so inevitable and therefore so…natural.  (For me the third book’s pairing seem kind of forced, which is why this aspect is such a plus.)  They didn’t have a love-at-first-sight sort of romance–how could they, having grown up in the same village–but neither was it unrelentingly antagonistic until they fell into bed, as happens in too many romance novels.  The sex was hot without being overblown, as per Abé’s MO from the other books.

The writing was also up to Abé’s established standards–and she is a fabulous writer.  She blends dreamy visions of the past with hypnotic, chilling warnings for the future in the voice of the series’ narrator/commentor.  The bulk of this book (as with the others) is told through as-Zoe/Rhys-sees-the-world narration, but the interludes offer an enigmatic counterpoint.  The more common prose was in the same vein as with the other drakón books, but it had a rougher edge that reflected the fact that neither Zoe nor Rhys was as refined as most of the other main characters have been.

My only criticisms are minor.  First, it seems foolish that neither Zoe nor Rhys considered that he was not a ghost prior to the rescue attempt.  Second (and this did not bother me but for some romance readers it might be a problem), for a romance novel, this book doesn’t actually have much romance or sexiness until near the end.  Finally, and more pertinently because this did nag me a bit, Zoe doesn’t actually make the choice to marry Rhys instead of her fiancé; the fiancé dies.  I prefer the conscious choice and the responsibility for the decision to circumstances arranging it, but he was also killed before she had the chance to really think it all through. 

These are very minor issues though.  I just wanted to mention them because they are the only things which keep me from putting it on par with The Dream Thief, which in my opinion is pretty much perfect.  But The Treasure Keeper is a close second in this series, which I would strongly recommend to anyone who would enjoy a cross-over romance/fantasy series full of beautiful language, strong characters, and fated love.

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