Review of Blazing the Trail by Deborah Cooke

Blazing The Trail
Deborah Cooke
New American Library
ISBN13:9780451236821
320 pages

Even though it’s winter in the Windy City, Zoe Sorensson’s life is about to heat up, she has a date to the Valentine’s dance but it’s not with the boy of her dreams and the Mages she thought she and her friends had triumphed over just turned a new and deadlier page in their spell book. And as if that’s not enough for the sixteen year old and still in training spiritual leader of her dragon-shape shifting species the Pyr, the new threat the Mages are preparing for could mean the total annihilation of all the remaining shape-shifters left on earth. There is a fragile alliance between the shifters but there is also dissention and mistrust and the one thing they must do to survive is work together. As if things couldn’t get more complicated when what Zoe needs is clarity, Jared the boy who does star in Zoe’s dreams shows up to help with the new Mage war, but will his appearance help or hinder her efforts, will they overcome the obstacles to see what their future holds or will they even survive to find out.

Deborah Cooke’s third book in her Dragon Diaries trilogy gives a whopper of an ending to her YA spin off of her adult paranormal romance series. In this we follow our fledgling Wyvern through more teenage angst, hormones and creepy villains that even give this lover of fantasy nightmares, as she has to solve more problems and mature more into her powers. Ms. Cooke’s novel would keep any YA reader on the edge of their seat but it’s the slightly more grown up than most YA’s that kept this adult reader happy. And it’s her characters that kept me reading all of the instillations of Zoe’s life and not because I know and love the parents from the adult series, which I do, but also because she gives these characters their own unique life-force that made me need to keep tabs. Something I loved about the novel is that she didn’t completely map out the final stage so I’m hoping someday she’ll reunite us with this tale. If you’re a fan of fantasy, YA or adult you will find something to love about this novel. Ms. Cooke does a great job of background but it wouldn’t be a trilogy if you weren’t supposed to read them in order.
Thank you Deborah Cooke for the icing on my dragonsmoke cake and I look forward to your next novel in your DragonFire novels, Ember’s Kiss coming in October of 2012.

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