Darkmistress's Full Review: Melanie Rawn - The Dragon Prince: Dragon Prince, t...
It is a wonderful and sad thing to say The Dragon Prince is the best novel Melanie Rawn ever wrote. Wonderful because it’s pretty easy to find, sad because it was her first novel and she’s been headed down hill, gathering speed, ever since.
Someone gave this book to my husband for the beautiful Michael Whelan cover. I read it because it was handy. And I was in Love.
The Dragon Prince is Rohan only son of the Desert King Zehava who is dead from dragon baiting before the fist chapter ends. His mother is a pretty ornament whose twin sister is the Lady of Goddess Keep (think Pope with magical powers.) His sister Tobin has a back bone of steel sheathed in velvet, a clever warrior and horse breeder husband and twin sons. You know all these people before the end of the first chapter.
The love interest is Sioned, a Sunrunner witch hand picked for Rohan by his Aunt Andrade, the Lady of Goddess Keep remember? She’s beautiful, powerful, clever and a minor noble.
The villain is Roelstra the High Prince, known most notably for his 19 daughters, the fact that he has stopped marrying his mistresses and regularly eliminates them (or allows them to be eliminated) when they only produce girls. He doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. He keeps power by setting the other princes at one another’s throats, he tries to seduce Sioned away from Rohan, and then there’s that mistress killing thing.
The magic! I knew I had you with the Sunrunner thing. I’ve read a lot of fantasy novels and this is one of the most interesting magics I’ve come across. Sunrunners are capable of communicating with each other over long distances by riding beams of sun light which are beautifully described in jewel tones. They can also use sun light to create illusions and do some divination. How cool is that? Unfortunately, Sunrunners can become "shadow lost" if they are Sunrunning and go out of direct sunlight.
The dragon are very important to the plot, but I can’t tell you how without blowing one of the great mysteries, so you’ll have to read the book yourself. Trust me, it’s worth it. The plot twists and winds enough for two books, the descriptions are jewel-like in their clarity, and the love story isn’t too shabby either.
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