The WitchSlayer

This book may not be the best book ever, but I had a lot of fun reading it. I really liked the forced proximity between the main characters. They needed it to slowly build their trust with each other. 

This was rough to get through. The writing felt very juvenile in many places. Lots of repeating... Noses were being scrunched in every chapter, for example. The idea of witches taking the body parts of magical creatures to grant them powers is quite a new (to me anyway) concept. It's too bad that Both Rurik and Amalia seem dumb as rocks. Amalia I can forgive, she's lived a sheltered, almost hermit-like lifestyle healing animals and magical creatures à la Radigast the Brown. However, Rurikis is well over a hundred years old, and is very slow to realize the way of things. Especially toward the end, which I won't talk about, because it's a spoiler. I just kept saying to myself...man...this guy's an idiot. There are also lots of exposition dumps. Every time some detail of worldbuilding is brought up, a paragraph follows explaining it. This not only robs the readers of the chance to use their imagination on how this fits in the world but also slows the story down. Sex scenes are clunky. We don't want or need to know where his left foot on her right side is positioned. They felt like they could have been half as long and portrayed the same thing. I found myself skimming because Yadda yadda left hand moves here...blah blah, nose scrunching ensues...And a big pet peeve of mine, uterus penetration trope happens in this book. Which we all know how that goes. It's not sexy, it's horrifically painful/internal damage and bleeding. Her anatomy is not like a dragon. Why does this stupid trope persist? I do not recommend this to anyone, there are far better dragon stories out there.