My friend, Kaye Wilkinson Barley, kidded me that Nora Roberts’ new Dragon Heart Legacy trilogy was written just for me. Maybe not, but The Awakening, the first in the series, was perfect for me since I love Ireland so much. It’s fiction, fantasy, and a story of family, both those of blood and chosen families, families of the heart. It’s a book about choice, choice of family, choice of duty.

The story begins in Talamh, where six hundred people meet at the Valley of the Fey. The old chieftain, the taoiseach, is dead, and it’s time for a new one. A teenage Keegan O’Broin, a man who knows how to fight, but not how to lead, chooses the sword that makes him the taoiseach.

Keegan O’Broin knew what he was doing when he made his choice. Breen Kelly, whose Irish father left her and her mother, grew up in Philadelphia, with a controlling mother who always made her feel as if Breen is worthless, with no abilities. Breen pushed herself through school, has a Master’s degree in Education, but hates teaching. She lives in an apartment with her best friend, Marco, a gay man who encourages her, giving her the support her mother never did. Breen, who has unusual dreams and suffers from anxiety, sees a silver-haired man on a bus, a man who seems to follow her. She thinks she hears him, “Come home, Breen Siobhan. It’s time you came home.” It’s after she sees the man that she finds papers at her mother’s house, papers that give her the freedom her mother never allowed. Breen’s father left her money, millions, and her mother never told her. Infuriated, Breen makes a life-changing decision. She and Marco are heading for Ireland. He’ll stay several weeks. She’ll stay the summer.

Breen feels as if she’s come home to the small cottage in Ireland. She’s eager to find herself for the first time. She’s going to blog, to discover her storytelling skills as she writes of her adventures in Ireland, and the escapades of a small dog that adopts her. It’s only after Marco leaves that she follows that dog into the woods, and into another world, Talamh, where people recognize her and welcome her home.

Talamh is a beautiful world of flowers and farms and nature. It’s a world of elves and dragons and witches, of magick, and Breen was born to that world. But, it’s a world where Breen is also in danger because of her birth and her family. Keegan O’Broin made his choice years earlier. Now, Breen has a choice to make. Will she return to Philadelphia, to Marco and the family she created there? Or, will she stay in Talamh where Keegan will train her to fight, to prepare her for her destiny in that world? In Talamh, she didn’t even know she had left family and friends behind. With Talamh in danger, Breen has choices to make.

I actually didn’t give you more information than you can get from any other summary of The Awakening. However, summaries don’t stress the importance of choice in the book, choices as to who to love, choices as to family, choices as to life decisions and duty to others. As always, Nora Roberts’ characters are realistic, not perfect, and ones I’d really like to know. Roberts also created a group of fanatics, cult followers who are frightening, but feel so familiar. They’re called “The Pious”. “Those who didn’t believe as they believed they killed, tortured, enslaved, all in the name of the gods – whichever god suited them.” I foresee that The Dragon Heart Legacy will feature a clash of good and evil. As she did with The Guardians Trilogy, Roberts is able to write a vivid ultimate battle.

I could go on about Ireland because I recognized the green Ireland of pubs and sheep and music, of Doolin and Galway, places I visited. Nora Roberts always writes Ireland with love and creates a special magick there.

Instead of going on, though, I’ll end with two sentences. “Do you have a favorite book?” “Why a favorite when there are so many, and I haven’t read all of them?” Ah, Nora Roberts. Thank you. I can’t wait for the second book.

Nora Roberts’ website is www.noraroberts.com

The Awakening by Nora Roberts. St. Martin’s Press, 2020. ISBN 9781250272614 (hardcover), 435p.


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