Dragons: Lost is the first installment in the Requiem for Dragons trilogy by Daniel Arenson. In this story world, weredragons—people who can change into dragons—once ruled the roost and now are hunted down and killed and are virtually extinct. Newborns are tested to see if they are weredragons, and if they are, they have the ability to change into a dragon removed from them by paladins of the Cured Temple, a very repressive group of people who force the people to live in austerity while they live the good life. The story starts when Cade transforms into a dragon after seeing his baby sister get her dragon abilities removed from her and then becomes hunted by the paladins of the Cured Temple. He then tries to find others like him.
For me, this is just an okay novel. The concept is a good one. I like the idea of weredragons. The world building is pretty good. But the book falters beyond the high level concepts it has in it. The writing is a bit underwhelming. The biggest problem with it, especially when it comes to the action scenes, is that the description is to general. I don’t feel as if I’m in the scene and part of the action when reading these scenes. There’s a lack of visceral, sensory detail, and it seems as if the author is just skimming through these sections. Characterization is also lacking. Every character seems to have some horrible dark thing that has happened to them in their past that they are trying to forget yet haunts them. The villains in the story, are particularly poorly written. They lack dimension and are one-note characters.
The novel does provide a good bit of entertainment value, and despite some of these flaws is worth reading, and I will continue on with this trilogy.
This series started off so strong with God Save the Queen. I enjoyed the concept, the writing style, the characters, and was digging the novel. I was lukewarm about the second entry into the trilogy, but still had hopes for the final addition. Unfortunately, it only got worse with Long Live the Queen. The series kept losing steam and then ran out of gas at the end. There was a lot not to like about this novel. The one thing that really bothered me is the illogical treatment of technology. So, the series sets up as not quite being a steampunk novel, but with technology that is considerably behind our technology. But somehow we are supposed to believe that their cloning technology is light years ahead of ours. Somehow they are not able to just clone a human fetus (which would be a serious stretch given the disparity in technology), but they can clone a fully grown were/goblin. They also have extremely advanced bioweapons. It also felt tired. The storyline never advanced from the first novel. It just felt like more of the same. The fight scenes were poorly described. The author just kind of skimmed over them, even during climactic fight scenes. Xandra is a very generic character, the type that has been done to death in this genre. If you have read the first two novels in the trilogy, you will probably want to finish it, but I would not bother.
I was glad to see Robert McCammon return to Matthew Corbett and his circa 17th-century novels. I’m both a fan of historical fiction and McCammon, who is one of my all-time favorite writers, making his mark in the horror genre. Making it even better, I had a chance to meet McCammon, and he signed a copy of this book for me.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the other two Corbett books prior to this one, and The Queen of Bedlam did not disappoint. The prose is rich in this novel. The pacing worked out great. The character development and the array of characters were really strong. There were some very memorable characters, including the villains, which mostly consisted of some strange individuals. The backstory behind this when it got revealed was compelling. The elements of mystery were well done. There really wasn’t much that I can complain about, except that I thought there some parts that were perhaps a bit too long-winded, and some of those sections could have been trimmed to make the novel better.
The novel concluded nicely. The final action sequence was strong, and it left itself open for additional novels in the future, as Corbett now has a job as a private detective and has made some really serious enemies. I look forward to reading more in the series.
Although there were some elements that I liked about The Passage, this novel was flawed in so many ways. For starters, this novel is way overwritten. It’s 766 pages that could be cut in half. There are entire pages that could be chopped, and it would make this a better read. The editor should have taken a hatchet to this novel. The novel lacks in believability, and that has nothing to do with the sci-fi/supernatural elements of it. It’s the parts that are grounded in the real world that lack believability. And then there are the characters. Oh, there are a great many of them, but only maybe two or three are remotely memorable. The rest are drab and lifeless and don’t come off the page.
I got through the first part of this novel, and it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t particularly good either. When I realized that the novel had fast-forwarded into the future, and I had over 400 pages of reading all-new characters, I just couldn’t get myself to read the rest of it. I gave it a shot, but it felt more like a chore than entertaining. After about fifty to a hundred pages of the second part, I raised the white flag and surrendered. This was just not compelling enough to keep going forward.
The second installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series was an improvement over the first novel. I’m not entirely sure where this novel fits in with the television show, but my remembrance is that the two primary plot lines encompassed more than one season on the show. The two main storylines are the one involving Sookie going to Dallas to help find a vampire that has gone missing, and Lafayette (who was a much bigger character on the television show) showing up dead in the sheriff’s car.
This novel was an easy read. Charlaine Harris writes in a pleasing style. The plot is not terribly complicated, although there was still room for a plot twist or two. Eric starts to become more of a major character in this novel, which is a good thing since he was my favorite character on the show. He has a certain confidence and swagger about him. Harris did a fine job breathing life into the character. Although not overly complex, the plot had enough meat on it to make it compelling. In a day and age where novels seemed to be growing in word count, this novel was short, sweet, and to the point. This was a fun novel that I would recommend.
The Wall of Storms is the follow up to The Grace of Kings. I started reading this immediately after I finished reading the last novel. I absolutely loved the first book in the series, so the bar was high for this novel. Perhaps, the bar was set to high, because I was a little disappointed in this novel. It’s not that it was bad, but it clearly does not measure up to the first novel in the series.
The novel takes place about ten years after The Grace of Kings. Kuni Garu is now the emperor trying to keep his kingdom together with duct tape and cult of personality. He faces treachery from within his own house, disgruntled nobles in the various kingdoms, and followers of the deceased hegemon. This is all the prelude to an upcoming invasion by a group of people who seem kind of like Vikings, but instead of longships, they have flying beasts that breathe fire and are capable of all sorts of destruction.
There is a lot of intrigue in this novel. There are also all sorts of technological innovations, which set this series apart from any epic fantasy series I have ever read, where magic is replaced by primitive (by our standards) technological innovation. There are, however, two big problems in this novel. One is that it is overwritten. It doesn’t have to be nearly as long as it is. I think if about 200 pages or so were chopped off, it would have been a better read. There are entire passages and flashbacks that contribute little to the story. The second point is that the characters in the first novel were terrific. They were phased out or killed off in this novel, for the most part, and the next generation of characters replacing them, which were more in focus here, were not nearly as compelling. In any story, but especially a series, the characters are the lifeblood of the story.
The ending of the novel sets up for a third in the series, and I will be interested in reading it, but my enthusiasm for it has waned a bit.