Cat Collins, Sleeping Dragons

Sleeping Dragons

Cat Collins

Five Star, Nov 2005, $26.95, 355 pp.

ISBN: 1594144192

In the land of Camarrhan, a realm where magic is taken for granted, Empath Cael is mortally wounded by an arrow in his shoulder that was shot by his country's enemy. Cael's Wayfinder (a person who controls the gates between the various worlds) takes him to an Australian hospital on Earth where Jenna Wade takes care of him. A loner, she surprises herself by being attracted to him. When Verra opens the Way and takes them to Jenna's home, to her surprise she heals him, and the way she does it makes them believe Jenna belongs in Camrrhan.

Jenna learns that her grandmother was chased by an evil man and escaped onto Earth, and she is taken to the Guild where she hones her Healing powers. Cael wants nothing to do with her because when he was unconscious, she had intimate relations with him, forming an empathic bond between them. He feels like he was given no chance in taking a mate, and while they do try to work out their differences, because the bond is unbreakable, they have to find and capture who is trying to decimate the magic from Camrrhan, by killing those that are strong in magic.

SLEEPING DRAGONS is a fine work of romantic fantasy. Cat Collins has created a world almost identical to Earth, except for the fact that technology is banned believing it destroys the planet. Magic works better than technology when properly used, and the heroine, after learning how to wield her magic has to agree. She is a strong yet vulnerable woman who realizes, first that she loves Cael and her new world, but readers will want to hit the hero over the head for being so unforgiving to a woman who didn't know what her impulsive act would cause to happen. Cat Collins' debut novel will win the author many fans, who hope there will be more books set in the word of Camrrhan.

Harriet Klausner