WL's Mainstream Gay Book Reviews - 70. Sacred Omega Book 1 of Guardian Dragons by Aiden Bates and Jill Haven (Shifters/Adventure/Mpreg)

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52928603

Yes, I will review a shifter Omega series, so folks get a taste of this subgenre in mainstream gay fiction. I have read a fair deal of shifter stories and Omegaverse stories, most of them have no plot and the characters are bland as heck. Most stories have the shifters fall in love and impregnate the male Omega, who acts like a female character stand-in. I also have a love of dragons, whether they are European winged lizards with a penchant for hoarding and virgin sacrifices, or the regal and majestic Asian flying serpent that rule the weather patterns. I’ve finished reading this six-book series and I do have to say that I was surprised at how decent it turned out, breaking some of the conventions of the genre and offering some actual plot with the story of these characters. The first book was published in June 2019 and showed some signs of brilliance, but it was held back by a lot of the tropes in the genre.

Length: 215 pages long and 6 hours 55 minutes on audible. It’s quite a breezy read for most normal-paced readers. I finished it in one sitting during the weekend. The setup was superb, but it does get a bit boring and drags in the middle with its various plots that go nowhere.

Plot: The dragon shifter species are independent and territorial. They have incredible protective instincts and long lives, they are ruled by dragon elders who could be thousands of years old. However, they were a dying species as their female population had died out over the centuries. The only thing that could save their species is finding a descendant of a “Sacred Omega”, a male human who can magically give birth to Dragon shifter offspring, among other shifter species. Reece, a young centuries-old dragon shifter, discovers one of these Sacred Omegas at a bar. Matt was no one special and he was just enjoying a night out looking for a gay hookup, but things started going from awkward to insane when Reece stalks him and a group of armed men tried to kill him. It turns out that there are humans with a religious mission to hunt down and kill every dragon shifter, including possible sacred omega mates. This group is revealed to be the Templars. To hide from these people, Matt accepts a fringe scientist’s request to be part of a dig, while Reece due to his protective dragon instincts follow without revealing the full truth to Matt. After some time at the dig, Reece and Matt’s sexual tension grows too much and they have sex, which reveals the anatomical difference between shifters, Reece’s knot, and results in Matt’s pregnancy with the first dragon offspring in generations. However, the Templars were still hunting these two men and there is a showdown towards the end of the novel with a promise for more as there are other Sacred Omega descendants out there being hunted by the Templars, who need dragon protection and love.

Review: This story is interesting and surprisingly less instant love than I thought it would be as part of the Omegaverse genre. Aiden Bates’ influence is clearly on display here as his stories are more action-packed and adventurous, while Jill Haven has written dragon shifter traditional Omegaverse stories in the past, Divine Dragon series with a similar issue revolving around dragon population and the need for fertile male omegas. What their combination entails is ultimately an actual plot with some stakes for the series going forward. Aiden Bate also established a key aspect of worldbuilding in this novel that helped contextualize how shifters could exist in the modern world in secret, a combination of wealth, social isolation, and even limited magic. They also bring something I am happy to see in an Omegaverse story, a true adversary.

The Templars make this story and series different from the other Omegaverse stories that exist, they are a real tangible threat with a dogmatic reason behind it. Human supremacists with a religious conviction that only their view and existence matters are intriguing concepts. Religious and bigoted fanatics are not unknown in gay fiction, they pop up quite often in standard fiction or fantasy as antagonists, because many folks have had dealings with such people who in real life hate everything they represent and seek their destruction. It’s an old stand-in, but it works for a good reason. One problem with Omegaverse stories in the mainstream is the lack of true conflict, which holds these fluffy romance stories back and, in my opinion, it makes these stories quite boring after a while. The conflict is what kept me interested in this series to read book 2.

As for the characters, Matt seemed like a standard twink, he would probably be the type of gay bottom that you could imagine in clubs and bars with his friends. At times, he does display the stereotypical “omega” traits in this genre, traditionally female traits, but it’s not quite as bad as some stories. Reece is also pretty standard when it comes to the Alpha type in the genre, he’s a protector and gets horny when his omega is around to the point of wanting to have sex with him. One of the problems with these two characters is that they are quite bland, especially if you have read a lot of Omegaverse stories, then you will know what will happen between them. There’s some chemistry based on the old damsel in distress trope in romance, but it feels forced rather than organically developed.

The greatest weakness in this novel to me is the pacing, Aiden and Jill had probably never worked together like this before this novel, so the story felt uneven and at times boring as heck with no romance or action. The dig site stuff regarding what people were doing, what the surrounding land was like, and other irrelevant plots added nothing to the overall story.

Rating: 3 out of 5, it has some promising ideas, but it also falls on some old character tropes from the Omegaverse genre. I wouldn’t be surprised if readers abandon the series after book 1, but if you do continue, I think book 3 gets to where the authors’ mutual abilities hit their stride in collaboration.