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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
In Episode 27, we read a book our Patron Dari chose as her once-per-year reward! Check out our Patreon to browse our reward structure and consider donating. Dragon Prince is a basic fantasy novel with medieval internet on light beams, dragon mating details, minor dragon ecology, and mostly decent dialogue. The book is divided into two sections and the latter section is where things take a turn for the terrible. This book does have a sexual assault scene and we discuss it briefly, so be aware of that. If you haven't had enough of fantasy/romance books, here we are again!
I very much minded the sexism and the gore, but I liked the overall story. It's a bit of a problem with oldschool fantasy - on a meta-level, the values and scenes displayed are often straight-out alien, from today's perspective.
4 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
His father fatally injured by a dragon, Rohan is about to become prince of Stronghold and the Desert. And the head of the magic Sunrunners is bringing him a wife, willy nilly. And on top of that, he has to negotiate advantageous contracts with all the other princes, including the twisted High Prince and his devious daughters.
Review
Remember bookstores? I can’t remember why I picked this up – I’m not sure I’d have been tempted by an online blurb. But with paper books (curated by the bookstore manager), you had less to choose from, and more chance of picking up something new just by chance. E-books have all sorts of benefits, but I do miss browsing. In any case, that’s what led me to Melanie Rawn’s first book, way back when it first came out – and all the sequels.
Dragon Prince is unabashedly romantic, in the style of Mary Stewart or M.K. Wren. It’s about handsome, good people who are fated to fall in love and make the world better. And, to some extent, you have to take that on faith, because, to be hones, on this later reading, the protagonists are sometimes pretty bad people. They agonize over it a bit, but Rawn skips past some of it pretty quickly. This is not a chance for deep character development of all sides as a ‘price you pay for power’ kind of argument. Mostly, she gets away with it, though, despite the size of the book, she rushes past a lot at the end of the book.
Still I liked it a lot at the time, and I still like it (if not quite as much) now. The characters, black and white as they are, are engaging and interesting. There’s quite a lot of political machination, but most of it you can skip pretty easily with confidence that Rawn will let you know what’s good and who’s bad. Rawn is less successful with the battle scenes; I found them hard to really make sense of, but again, all you have to know is how it ends up, and there’s not too much surprise there.
If you like a fair amount of romance in your fantasy – not rippling muscles and heaving bosoms, but star-crossed lovers – you’ll like this. I did, enough to enjoy all five thick sequels and the ill-fated separate trilogy that followed.
Summary
His father fatally injured by a dragon, Rohan is about to become prince of Stronghold and the Desert. And the head of the magic Sunrunners is bringing him a wife, willy nilly. And on top of that, he has to negotiate advantageous contracts with all the other princes, including the twisted High Prince and his devious daughters.
Review
Remember bookstores? I can’t remember why I picked this up – I’m not sure I’d have been tempted by an online blurb. But with paper books (curated by the bookstore manager), you had less to choose from, and more chance of picking up something new just by chance. E-books have all sorts of benefits, but I do miss browsing. In any case, that’s what led me to Melanie Rawn’s first book, way back when it first came out – and all the sequels.
Dragon Prince is unabashedly romantic, in the style of Mary Stewart or M.K. Wren. It’s about handsome, good people who are fated to fall in love and make the world better. And, to some extent, you have to take that on faith, because, to be hones, on this later reading, the protagonists are sometimes pretty bad people. They agonize over it a bit, but Rawn skips past some of it pretty quickly. This is not a chance for deep character development of all sides as a ‘price you pay for power’ kind of argument. Mostly, she gets away with it, though, despite the size of the book, she rushes past a lot at the end of the book.
Still I liked it a lot at the time, and I still like it (if not quite as much) now. The characters, black and white as they are, are engaging and interesting. There’s quite a lot of political machination, but most of it you can skip pretty easily with confidence that Rawn will let you know what’s good and who’s bad. Rawn is less successful with the battle scenes; I found them hard to really make sense of, but again, all you have to know is how it ends up, and there’s not too much surprise there.
If you like a fair amount of romance in your fantasy – not rippling muscles and heaving bosoms, but star-crossed lovers – you’ll like this. I did, enough to enjoy all five thick sequels and the ill-fated separate trilogy that followed.
Interesting romance for the first half, interesting world, but all the momentum goes out of the book at about the 50% mark.
What an awful book. The writing is competent, which is what kept me involved for so long. But after the time jump (post-plague), I could see that we weren't going to be making much progress, plot and character wise. What miserable people.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Rape, War
Old school epic fantasy...complicated and violent, but very well written.
I feel like I have read this story before. Very predictable mostly because the author feels the need to set the characters up for obvious fall. Usually that honor is reserved for the villain, but not in this book.
It also manages somehow to be overly long and yet oddly fast paced.
I did enjoy it, though got annoyed enough with the characters and the length (and the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen) that I skimmed the last half of the book.
Ended with a bit less of a happy ending then I would have liked.
It also manages somehow to be overly long and yet oddly fast paced.
I did enjoy it, though got annoyed enough with the characters and the length (and the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen) that I skimmed the last half of the book.
Ended with a bit less of a happy ending then I would have liked.