People who look like us but have dragon ancestry can interbreed with us and produce children who are more or less gifted with dragonish behaviours. As an Enforcer, falling into the role when her aunt flew off with her hoard, Rena Drake has seen the best and the worst of her kind. The more ancient dragons eat human flesh, newer ones just meat. Now a group of renegade Draken is going around killing humans without paying attention to the police. Rena's job is to stop them from endangering the rest of her community.

BREATH OF FIRE is required to make a Draken's body burn up completely. A female Draken was among those killed, and Rena has enough on her plate when an FBI agent shows up. Noah Ford works in a paranormal unit, and is trying to understand the rash of killings. Rena is thought to be a psychic... among other talents she can erase memories. There is quite a lot of violence in this tale and Alasdair, the ruler of Rena's clan as well as her father, is unfortunately a source of some of it. Rena doesn't have a choice in the master she serves. Each clan is suspicious of the others and if Alasdair is right, some Draken are using that to their advantage, killing Draken as well as humans to muster an army.

My usual quibble with urban fantasy - that it starts off as adventure and quickly becomes explanations of hierarchies and who gives orders to whom - is realised again as Rena hears a lot of Draken history and gets summoned or ordered around. This may be part of the author's intricate weaving but it slows down the adventure. Every time Rena meets another dragon things get crashed around or people get broken. Well, I suppose that's what you have to expect of dragons. We see that Draken like the colours red and gold a lot; not all of them can take dragon shape; and they take much longer to grow up than humans. Then Rena gets a lifemate, Julian, and her inner dragon begins to take over, including shapechanging, hoarding and mating behaviours, and life gets a lot more interesting.

BREATH OF FIRE by Liliana Hart is a lengthy absorbing fantasy read, with plenty of action - but not all of it pleasant. Urban fantasy fans will enjoy this unusual adult romance.