Review:  Of Flames and Fallacies (The Arterian series Book 1) by Courtney Whims

 

Rating: 2⭐️

DNF

🚨 Spoilers 🚨

I rarely rate books I don’t finish but I’m making an exception here . 

This book had a lot of potential and at the very least, a strong storyline and woman character. 

Right up to the SMH moment of the narrative.

The MFC has an extremely ill mother who needs constant care, an absent father, and no money to feed them . They are starving.  In a fit a rage over their circumstances, she knocks over the cross on her father’s grave and finds a forbidden dragon’s egg. 

We’ve been given a loose history of dragons and the current Kingdom, but dragons are outlawed. And it’s a death sentence to have the egg. 

Anyway, her mother eventually says something like find your ex boyfriend and take the egg/baby dragon back to Dragon Lands.  Then dies in as the house goes up in flames. 

Baby dragon is cute and Katerina Blackwind, is resourceful. So far so good. Unfortunately they find her ex boyfriend and things go downhill fast.   Cole is one of those types that is always wanting to save the woman while constantly putting them in danger.  And she lets him. And then puts the dragon in danger too while continuing to do things contrary to instructions laid out by her deceased father and , honestly, common sense. 

But everything in the narrative comes to a screeching halt for me at 35% when this occurs: 

Daeja, now a pretty big dragon and Katerina are in the woods outside an iffy camp and having this conversation . Mind you, they should have been on their way to Dragon Lands but Cole keeps delaying them because it’s too “dangerous “. 

Katerina is speaking on page 154 of 427: 

“Why did you want me to ride you?” She shifts her body, somehow managing to edge even closer to me. “I thought we could get to the Dragon Lands faster if we could fly there.” 

I gaze up at her. “

“We can’t go without Cole.” 

“And why not?” 

“Because—” I pause, wracking my brain for my own reasoning. 

Because my mother said so.” It sounded pathetic.

— Of Flames and Fallacies by Courtney Whims

Yes, they can just zip-a-dee-doo-dah right there by directly flying. Boom done.  No problem. Have new adventures in Dragon Lands and, oh yes, your dragon would be safe. 

But nope, with more than 300 pages to go, that doesn’t happen. SMH

So what do you expect from the reader , especially me every time Cole or someone betrays them or does something that is unbelievably stupid? Welp, they should have just flown outta there to begin with.

Yes, if you are an author don’t write an out at the beginning of the book. 

So here’s a buy link. It’s a DFN and a 2 for that SMH element. 

The Arterian series:

Of Flames and Fallacies #1

Of Blood and Banes #2 – Dec 2, 2025

Buy link 

        Of Flames and Fallacies (The Arterian series Book 1)

    

Blurb 

Possession of dragon contraband in the Arterian kingdom is a guaranteed brutal execution. 

When twenty-two-year-old Katerina Blackwind finds a dragon egg buried in her father’s grave, she begins to question everything she thought she knew. She must return the forbidden dragon hatchling—Daeja—north to the secretive Dragon Lands: where dragons roam free and a rebellion group resides.

But she can’t do it on her own – smuggling a dragon hatchling across the realm during a war between Arterians and rebels means she can be killed by either side. She knows there’s only one person she can truly trust, her old flame, Cole Ashbourne.

Yet, Cole is much different than the last time Kat saw him: deliciously chiseled in all the right places with a raw power lingering beneath the surface. Cole is torn between his responsibilities as a newly-promoted Captain in the King’s military, and his heart.

Kat works on a plan to get Daeja to the Dragon Lands while keeping a low profile at the military outpost. Though, having a room next to the sinisterly provocative Darian Raventhorn proves to be anything but easy.

Danger lurks at every turn, and as more secrets are unearthed, Kat is left to question everything she thought she knew about dragons, her family, love, and the kingdom.

• ASIN: B0DQHPJS8D
• Publication date: January 2, 2025
• Language: English
• Print length: 427 pages