Onyx & Ivory by Mindee Arnett

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Sex is alluded to with a couple of characters, A couple of characters make out heavily and almost have sex
 
They call her Traitor Kate. It’s a title Kate Brighton inherited from her father after he tried to assassinate the high king of Rime.

Cast out of the nobility, Kate now works for the royal courier service. Only the most skilled ride for the Relay and only the fastest survive, for when night falls, the drakes—deadly flightless dragons—come out to hunt. Fortunately, Kate has a secret edge: She is a wilder, born with forbidden magic that allows her to influence the minds of animals.

And it’s this magic that leads her to a caravan massacred by drakes in broad daylight—the only survivor Corwin Tormaine, the son of the king. Her first love, the boy she swore to forget after he condemned her father to death.

With their paths once more entangled, Kate and Corwin must put the past behind them to face this new threat and an even darker menace stirring in the kingdom.


In the beginning, this book gave me serious Green Rider vibes, and although it did have a few things in common with that book, by the end, this one ended up being quite different. As fantasies go there is nothing new here. Several of the same tried and true fantasy tropes are used, but I still liked this book anyway. I enjoyed most of the characters and their relationships. I enjoyed the forbidden romance aspect of the story. I also thought that the characters seemed more grown up than a lot of the angst-ridden YA characters I've read in other books. The magic system, the world, and the belief system could have been more fleshed out. It was predictable, and the villain was too cookie-cutter. There was also the political discussion about contraceptives, the poor, and over population that, while might be a worthy thing to discuss, felt out of place in this book and message heavy. But overall, I was satisfied with this easy read. Sometimes that all I need, something easy that doesn't make me think too hard.

On another note- someone please tell me why there is a tree on the cover of this book.