Wow I finished this one just in time to make this post, and wow I think adding more supernatural elements to the classics makes it much more enjoyable for me! Thank you so much to Jess @ Audiobookworm Promotions for hosting this series tour, and for having me alone for the ride. Be sure to click on the banner for the rest of the tour schedule – we have three books included! – and for more upcoming tours.

England is overrun by dragons of all shapes and sizes. Most people are blissfully unaware of them and the Pendragon Treaty that keeps the peace between human and dragon kind. Only those born with preternatural hearing, like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are able to hear and converse with dragonkind.  

When the first firedrake egg laid in a century is stolen from Pemberley, the fragile dragon peace teeters on collapse. Darcy has no choice but to chase down the thief, a journey that leads him to quaint market town of Meryton and fellow Dragon Keeper, Elizabeth Bennet.    

Elizabeth shares a unique bond with dragons, stronger than anything Darcy has ever experienced. More than that, her vast experience and knowledge of dragon lore may be the key to uncovering the lost egg. But Elizabeth can’t stand Darcy’s arrogance and doesn’t trust him to care properly for a precious baby firedrake. After all, he already lost the egg once. What’s to prevent it from happening again?  

Can he win her trust and recover the stolen egg before it hatches and sends England spiraling back into the Dark Ages of Dragon War?  

Jane Austen meets Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. A must-listen for Pern fans.

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Five time BRAG Medallion Honoree and #1 best selling Historical Fantasy author, Maria Grace has her PhD in Educational Psychology and is a 16-year veteran of the university classroom where she taught courses in human growth and development, learning, test development and counseling. None of which have anything to do with her undergraduate studies in economics/sociology/managerial studies/behavior sciences. She pretends to be a mild-mannered writer/cat-lady, but most of her vacations require helmets and waivers or historical costumes, usually not at the same time.

She writes gaslamp fantasy, historical romance and non-fiction to help justify her research addiction.

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Benjamin Fife has always had a passion for learning. With a mind that remembers all sorts of numbers and useless trivia, he regularly wins local radio shows and enjoys confusing people with sci-fi quotes. 

Fife grew up in Southeast Idaho. He attended college at Idaho State University, where he met his future wife in their music theory class. They have been married nearly 20 years and now have six children and a whole menagerie of animals. When their oldest daughter was three or four years old they started reading aloud from novels every night at bedtime, and have continued the tradition ever since. The family loves exploring various worlds and topics through Fife’s wonderful reading skills, which get better every year. They all have his Christmas Carol voices memorized (and the older kids are known to quote along with portions), since he has read it to them every December. 

Benjamin enjoys all kinds of sci-fi and fantasy – both books and shows, is an extreme eclectic music lover, and prefers his chocolate to be of the 90% cocoa variety. Above all, he loves to be with his family. He loves recording audio books, and is delighted to tell people, “I’ve finally found what I want to be when I grow up!”

Disclaimer: I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Maria Grace. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

So basically Pride and Prejudice with dragons was a lot cooler than I anticipated. Like, legit, think of the original story – which I personally could not read no matter how old I think I am – but add dragons that communicate with humans and of course Uther Pendragon and that whole line is involved too. And did I mention that REDACTED is descended from the Pendragon line? I mean, come on. If you’re going to have a book with dragons, you gotta have someone related to the Pendragons, am I right?

So yeah. I am a dragon fiend – yes! it’s not mermaid related and I’m still a fiend! – and I love the addition of dragons to this classic story. It really did make me enjoy it so much more than all my other attempts at trying to read Austen’s original story. Nothing wrong with Austen at all, but I just can’t get into that old prose. I just can’t. And I’ll be even more honest, my favorite adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is actually Bride and Prejudice, which was a Bollywood version wish Aishwarya Rai (in the gif below, love her, appreciate her, bow down to her greatness).

My second favorite would have to be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because who doesn’t like adding zombies to the mix?

So I’m happy to say that this version is my third favorite adaptation of Austen’s original story, and it’s really in huge part to how Grace was able to seamlessly weave in the dragons into old school England. Britain? That place where all the Austen stories seem to take place.

Wow I’m totally showing my ignorance to the original story so I apologize for that.

As far as our narrator Fife is concerned, he really tricked me! He gave me the impression of being this sweet old grandpa figure and all of a sudden I’m super wrong! I think he did a great job with narrating this story, and I think out of all of the characters, I felt he matched Darcy the most. I could hear in his narration where it was Darcy’s inner thoughts and it just matched him so well. I also think he did a great job at pitching all of the dragons differently depending on their size and age, and species as well. It was really cool to hear him as Longbourn because that was a grumpy old dragon and he just reminded me as a huge puppy dog.

I also love how this story doesn’t just end with the typical ending for Pride and Prejudice, and I’m so glad that I get the opportunity to review the rest of the series here with you all!