She builds her conflict and tension very slowly, but does it by finding the scene and characters with the most interesting point of view. She can change place, time, and the point of view character without ever skipping a beat, keeping the narrative moving from scene to scene without confusion. The book, however, still adds to the Dragon Prince mythos as a whole, and as such, never suffers from that dreaded boring middle section of the book.Īs a writer, I have to commend Rawn for her ability to move the narrative around to exactly where it needs to be. Both have narrative arcs that are completely contained within this book. This book could easily be picked up and read as a stand alone novel, with its own overreaching arc of the imposter son of Roelstra and of the sorcerer Segev (who make two great villains). The other strength of this book is that it doesn't get anywhere close to just being a middle book in a trilogy. In this manner, Rawn creates very real characters.

She somehow manages to make each of the characters interesting, and seems to enjoy pointing out that two people rarely see the same event in the same way. What I Liked: Rawn's specialty is on display in this middle book of the Dragon Prince trilogy, with her interweaving of so many different characters, all with personality quirks, motivations, and opinions.

It was a rehash down to the trial by combat to the death as the climax during a meeting of the regions.

The entire plot was too similar to the first book. Given that she wrote this long before GRRM wrote A Game of Thrones, I wonder if he was inspired or just a coincidence? Marriages among the lords are politically motivated to foster trade and unify the houses/seats and children of these lords and more powerful vassals are fostered at other seats until they become of age. The lords of these seats are peers to each other except to the High Prince. The lords have vassals that owe their allegiance to them and not to the High Prince (equivalent to King or Queen of Westeros). These seats have memorable names such as Greypearl of Dorval or Castle Crag of Princemarch. Dragon Prince world has a bunch of regions (13) all ruled by a ruling lord and has specific seat (house) that she/he rules from. I did note that the political structure that she devised for her world building was exactly the same as GRRM's Westeros. She sets up a nice uncompleted plot point that has me curious to read the concluding novel of the series to see that resolved. A huge improvement from the first book.Ģ. There was morally grey characters that developed (ie Pandsala and Andrade) and the motivations of the villians and the grey characters are believable and realistic. Villains are much more subtle and nuanced. A lot of the issues I mentioned in my review of Dragon Prince seems to be solved.ġ. Definitely an improvement from her debut novel.

The dragon prince book melanie rawn