Stronghold, the first novel of Melanie Rawn's Dragon Star trilogy, continues the with the story began in her Dragon Prince trilogy.

In this book, we see the world as Rohan has worked to build it come to a shattering halt. The relative peace he had managed to maintain comes under threat by an outside enemy force, the Vellant'im, who come from across the sea. With their thick beards, barbaric ways, and overwhelming numbers, defeating them seems almost impossible.



The Basic Plot


Stronghold begins describing life as usual for Rohan and Sioned, among others, with a few minor events happening within the first 140 pages.
After this, the plot really begins to thicken when the Vellant'im ships arrive, attacking the coastline. They kill everyone in sight, boarding up houses and burning the people within.

All of this was predicted by Andry, Lord of Goddess Keep, in the earlier novels. He had had dreams seeing his childhood home, Radzyn, in flames.
Before the attack, Tobin, Andry's mother, had a stroke and was bedridden. Because of this, Rohan and Sioned had traveled from Stronghold to Radzyn to visit her, since Tobin is Rohan's sister. Incidentally, Rohan and Sioned were at Radzyn when it was attacked by the Vellant'im.

Unable to fight a war they were unprepared for, the people of Radzyn decide to flee towards Remagev, another holding in the desert owned by Walvis and Feylin. They cannot defend this castle either so they flee to Stronghold in the hopes of making a stand against the terrible Vellant'im.

The worst part of all this is not knowing why they are being attacked. The Vellant'im had destroyed all castles except those within the desert (Radzyn, Remagev, Stronghold). A question is - why are they so interested in the desert? The only things in the desert are heat, sand, and dragons. And the Vellant'im are terrified of dragons, and fall flat on their faces if they see one.

The Vellant'im are relentless. Their ships and their catapults are able to resist Sunrunner's Fire. They are barbaric, taking pride in their kills, advertising their kills by the number of beads woven into their beards. They seem to have some insider knowledge of sorcerers, or diarmadh'im, and the worst part is that they know the weakness of the Sunrunners, or faradh'im: Iron.



Characters


I don't know how many characters are in this book, but there are certainly more than I can keep track of. It wouldn't be so bad if everybody wasn't named after everybody else.

Thankfully, there is a character index at the end of the book. It just lists the relevant characters in the book, without going into characters from past books. And it doesn't list characters that are mentioned but play no useful part. Even so, the list encompasses five pages, with about twenty characters per page. The index is largely unhelpful though because it doesn't give much relevant information, but simply who their parents were, who they married, and dates, etc. Here is an example; Rohan (677-). Prince of the desert 698-; High Prince 705-. Squire at Remagev 690; knighted 695. m698 Sioned. Father of Pol., which is more elaborate than many since he is such an important character, who has accomplished a fair amount in his life.

Just looking through the character index will indicate why it is so hard to keep track of characters, not because of the sheer number of them, but because their names are all very similar, and some even have the same name as dead characters! Here is a small list of characters which should show you what I mean: Andrev, Andry, Audran, Audrite, Aurar, Chadric, Chayla, Chaynal, Chiana, Jahnavi, Jayachin, Jihan, Johlarian, Jolan, Rialt, Rihani, Rinhoel, Rislyn, Riyan, Rohan, Rohannon, Sioned, Sionell, Sioneva.

I find myself spending a lot of time checking and re-checking the character index from chapter to chapter, thinking now "Who the heck is so-and-so"?

Just a piece of advice; characters who have died in previous books are not listed in the character index of later books. So don't check the character index in future books if you don't want to know who dies!



Politics

These books are rife with politics. I, for one, hate politics, but yet she manages to fill her pages with political discussions without being overly boring. I can usually judge a book by how fast I read it. If I don't really like a book, it can take months for me to finish it. I finished Stronghold in less than two weeks, and at almost 600 pages, that's quite good for me!

With all the princes, princesses, not to mention their children, some good and some evil, others trying to take over the throne of the High Prince, it's hard to keep track of who's who. This is especially difficult when different children within a family have differing views; some can be good, others can be evil, etc.

Not only is it difficult to keep track of all the royalty, but worse yet, you have to try to remember where each one lives and what the name of their castle is.



Miscellaneous Musings


Sunrunning

Sunrunning is an attribute unique to Rawn's books. It's quite hard to explain, and it encompasses many things, but basically it is a form of magic. The ability to do this is inherited, and follows genetic inheritance rules. Sunrunners can do many things, but they need the light of the sun to do most. They can have what is best described as an out of body experience and can go happily running across their world on a beam of light. They can use this to speak to other sunrunners, or just take a peak at anyplace the light happens to penetrate. They are also capable of many others things, such as summoning Fire, etc.


Battle Notes

During one of the Vellant'im attacks on a particular castle, there was a description of machines that had been built, with a great wooden arm, and for the life of them the characters couldn't figure out what they would be used for. This struck me as strangely odd while I was reading it, since these were catapults. For a civilization as advanced in battle tactics as they seemed to be, how could they not know what a catapult is, or at the very least, be able to figure out what possible use it might have?

One thing that gets to me a bit when I am reading fantasy novels are the details of the battle. It's not that I can't handle the gore, it's just that it seems repetitive from one book to the next. I don't really care for a full chapter explaining how many enemy limbs were chopped off, or about every nick and scratch the characters receive. Melanie Rawn keeps her battle descriptions short and sweet, basically giving a run down of what happened and who won. The relevant details, not just gory filler.


Rohan, Sioned, and Their Brat

When I first started reading Dragon Prince, I took a liking to Rohan and Sioned. But very quickly, they grew old, and Pol (their son) grew up. I really don't like Pol, he's a bit of a brat (and there's a very satisfying part in this book where Rohan puts him in his place). Unfortunately, Rawn has been preparing us for the time when Pol is to become High Prince. Rohan and Sioned take the background, and Pol get's more and more of the spotlight. I hope she just makes him more bearable in the future books; the only reason I continued on with this trilogy was to read about Rohan and Sioned.



Final Thoughts

This book doesn't really end, it just cuts off at a convenient point, and immediately picks up in the next book, The Dragon Token. This is in contrast to the books in the Dragon Prince trilogy, which were complete books within themselves, even though it really helped if you had read the previous ones first.

A few sub-plots are developed that never seem to go anywhere, or develop to their full potential. For example, an elite few of Sunrunners at Goddess Keep figure out a way to change their form so they look like someone else. This is used, but I think there could be a lot more things done with it (Maybe in future books?). Also, Brenlis' psychic ability is rather wasted as well.

I liked Stronghold better than the novels from Dragon Prince. The first three books were good, but it was as though they were missing something, what I don't know, but whatever it was, Stronghold had it.
I am very comfortable with Melanie Rawn's writing style; she doesn't overdo it with overuse of fancy words. She gets to the point with just enough description (sometimes too little) to get the point across. Very easy to read, flows nicely.

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I am currently reading The Dragon Token and will (hopefully) write a review of it shortly after I am finished it. When I do, I will post the link here.

Happy reading!






Recommended: Yes