Amber Kell, $0.99, ISBN 978-1310729393
Fantasy Romance, 2015
Now, now, don’t get excited, people. I know these days there are so-called woke people wanting to present a certain criminal kind of lust as an oppressed protected group, and worse, they try to make this an LGBT+ thing: if you hate pedophiles, then you are anti-LGBT+ so prepare to be cancelled, get called out by USA Today, lose your job, have your house egged, etc. They even came up with that euphemism “minor attracted person” to make it sound more palatable, but the word “groomer” in the title of this thing has nothing to do with all this unpleasant nonsense. Thank goodness for small blessings.
On the other hand, people that see the word “dragon” in the title and expect a mighty shape-shifting dragon hero… oh boy, these people are going to be disappointed.
Derlin Balls, oops, Bails in Amber Kells’s The Dragon Groomer is a more literal kind of groomer, as he loves cleaning up dragon stables. His greatest pleasure is being paid to do what he loves. Don’t look at me; the author just says this is because he loves dragons lots. Perhaps he has a fetish and the smell of dragon feces arouses him, who knows.
I don’t know how old Derlin is, he starts out behaving like a simple child in this story, which makes me give the word “groomer” in the title a side eye and wonder if I should be more suspicious about the use of that word. Our hero has no idea, for example, that his ability to telepathically communicate with dragons is not a normal human trait. He will stammer and blush in the presence of manly men, and generally come off as someone from a position of utter subservience in every way.
The author then has a bunch of horny knights drooling at Derlin as he works, and Derlin being utterly oblivious about all this or how hot he is… is it too late for me to delete my defense of this title in the first paragraph?
Fortunately, after a quick jump to two months down the road, Derlin morphs into a far more mature fellow, at least compared to his previous self, and actually begins to converse like a more articulate person. This puts him on a more equal footing with his designated boyfriend Tyron the Training Captain, thus making the whole thing far more readable and far less creepy. Sure, I have a hard time reconciling how Derlin can make such a quick character transformation in just two months without having body snatchers involved, but I’m happy to take this Derlin over that creepy child-like early version.
I also find it amusing and quaint that we have a dragon groomer that gets even the most terrifying and dangerous dragons to roll over and let him rub cream on their sore bellies, much to the amazement of the dragon owners. These dragons acting as relationship advice experts to Derlin is also too cute for words.
Unfortunately, in the later parts of the story that has Derlin become more grown-up, this angle is downplayed for Derlin to play the more typical “I’m the healer babe boy giving bedside TLC to my man” trope.
Can I get some kind of reboot here, with the more grown-up Derlin combined with the more interesting dragon whisperer aspect of the early parts of the story?
In the end, The Dragon Groomer has some adorable ideas and concepts, and I like it far more than I initially expected to because of these elements. However, it still resembles two different stories rather clumsily spliced together. If the author had taken the best bits out of each story and put them together more cohesively, the end result would likely be something awesome.
