Review Nightdrake by Lara Adrian

[Nix]

Nightdrake by Lara Adrian is a novella about a tough female we all end up knowing as Nisha the Heartless. In a world of post-apocalyptic mayhem where the continents have been divided by a breaking of the land and it’s borders, the dark world is populated by humans and stranges. These Stranges are comprised of anything from shapeshifters to telepaths, nymphs to hobgoblins, trolls to gargoyles and everything in between. Creatures that our heroine has an intense loathing for.

Nisha makes a living as a mercenary. Each client wants something different and will pay whatever price to get it. Nisha, for a price will deliver whatever the client wants. She’s supposed to be this cold hearted, tough female who would probably sell her own mother if the price was right. That is until she was asked to pick up some mysterious cargo that arrived from exotic New Asia and deliver it to a well paying client.

There were three rules imposed on this delivery. 1) Keep the crate and the contents dry at all times, 2) Don’t insert anything into the crate, and 3) Do not open under any circumstances.

Unfortunately these rules were not followed by Nisha when whatever was inside the crate started coughing and sounding like it was going to die. When Nisha offered the creature water and opened the crate to help it, out came the most beautiful dragon which shifted into a man before her eyes. It was this sole action that sent our heroine’s world spinning on it’s axis and with the ending of the story, an unusual twist was revealed.

While I’m not going to give away every aspect of this short story what I will say is it was an amazing read that you would not want to put down. I was actually very surprised at the ending in what happened. The characters were well thought out and the attention to detail was amazing. Not that I expected any differently from Lara. Once I got started reading Nightdrake, I couldn’t put it down until I was finished. Which might I add was in less than an hour. The story was a quick fast paced read that kept my attention throughout the entire book. A must read. The only drawback was that I would love to see it developed into a novella at the very least if not a full length novel