The Last Dragon of the East

The Last Dragon of the East is a standalone NA fantasy romance by Katrina Kwan. Released 8th Oct 2024 by Simon & Schuster on their Saga Press imprint, it's 320 pages and is available in paperback, library binding (large print), audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. 

This is an Asian folkloric fairy tale, full of dragons, fated romance, demigods, and "chosen one" tropes. It's full of romance, with a backdrop of political intrigue and war. It has potential, and the author is talented with characterization and pretty good with pacing, but there are a lot oddities that detract from the whole. 

There are a number of gruesomely specific, explicit, kind of nauseatingly violent torture, murder, and exploitation scenes. It wouldn't have been (terribly) amiss in a violent bro-war fantasy saga (Sanderson, Rothfuss, Correia and the other boys in the band), but is more than a little jarring in a fantasy romance. The world building is noticeably lacking in depth and it's sad, because the source material is so rich and varied. 

The author (or at least editors and marketing crew) at Simon & Schuster seemingly couldn't decide who the book was *for*, and as such it was an odd dichotomy of war and tea-house cozy. There are funny moments, but juxtaposed with the torture are mostly just queasy-making.

Three stars. There certainly could be fantasy tea-house-romantasy-cozy fans who are also Monster Hunter International/Mistborn Saga lovers, but that Venn Diagram has to have an oddly small overlap and it's not at all clear which readers the author and publisher were aiming for.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.