The Girl Whom the Dragon Tattooed by Steven A. Simpson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Girl Whom the Dragon Tattooed is a story about Kelli who on her 18th birthday rushes out to the tattoo parlor to get her first tattoo now that she is an “adult” since her parents wouldn’t let her before then. She finds an old book in the back when looking to find a design and falls in love with a dragon tat that would wrap around her arm. Once complete the tattoo transfers her to another realm where the soldiers are marked by the dragon they serve and protect with the same tattoo.

Overall the story didn’t quite work for me. Kelli seems just what she is in the beginning, a young girl wanting to rebel against her parents. But when we make the jump to the other land the general is found to have raped young female soldiers and it just got too dark a subject for such a short story. Just felt rushed through such dark subject matter for what started off more of a carefree story. Perhaps it would’ve worked better as a full length novel. The idea behind the tattoo taking Kelli into another world was intriguing though.