Named of the Dragon

By: Susanna Kearsley

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren

The charm of spending the Christmas holidays in South Wales, with its crumbling castles and ancient myths, seems the perfect distraction from the nightmares that have plagued literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw since the loss of her baby five years ago. Instead she meets an emotionally fragile young widow who's convinced that Lyn's recurring dreams have drawn her to Castle Farm for an important purpose - and she's running out of time. With the help of a reclusive, brooding playwright, Lyn begins to untangle the mystery and is pulled into a world of Celtic legends, dangerous prophecies, and a child destined for greatness.

©1998, 2015 Susanna Kearsley (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

A Good Story Marred by an Irritating Character

I have been a long-time reader of Susanna Kearsley's work and so I chose this book expecting more of her usual magic. I wasn't disappointed. The story was quite engaging, and its Welsh setting added to the sense of mystery and exoticism. The narrative at times wandered between factual British history and Arthurian legend, which I found a bit uneven, seeing as how the two elements had no connection. The main character's grief and sense of loss over her stillborn son was heartrendingly poignant, and the continuing sense of mystery around the 'dragon' was satisfying.
My one quibble was the character of Bridget, who got on my nerves from the beginning to the very end. She just wasn't realistic - we were constantly told how beautiful she was, how talented a writer she was, how successful she was, how she captivated every man within a hundred-mile radius, how she could eat enormous amounts of food, never exercise, and still boasted a perfect figure. That she was also self-centred, spoilt, and selfish didn't endear her to me and I felt the book would have been better off if she'd been a bit less perfect - in other words, more like a real person instead of a seductive paragon of career success with a love life to rival Marilyn Monroe. I think successful women's fiction requires female characters with whom readers can identify, and Bridget didn't fulfill this role for me. In fact, I found she distracted my attention from the story, which was a shame. Also, the narration made Bridget sound like the Coronation Street character Claudia Colby!

A good story and a decent listen which would have been better if Bridget hadn't made it to the final edit.