Peter M. Last

RANTS AND RAMBLES (SPOILER WARNING)

• • I hate when a book squanders its potential or, in this case, has said potential ripped away from it. Dragonfire, the fourth installment in the series, was such a boring snooze-worthy dumpsterfire of a book that it managed to suck all the momentum out of the series which was finally coming into its own. It also killed off the villains of the story, making me believe it would be the last book. But then Dragonlight reared its head, made ugly by the fact that it should have been the best book of the lot, an impressive conclusion warranted by the rest of the DragonKeeper Chronicles (except that awful fourth book). It should have been the culmination of five volumes of action and adventure into an epic ending, defeating the ultimate villain and bringing the many parallel storylines to fitting conclusions. Alas, this was not to be, which brings me to my second rant.
  • The true main villain of the series was not developed or, indeed, even mentioned at all. Being cynical I might say this is because this villain was not conceived of until after the other villains were defeated in the fourth book and the author wanted to squeeze another volume out of the series. Being pragmatic, I would counter that, in retrospect, there were breadcrumbs alluding to this ultimate showdown earlier in the series, making me believe it was the author’s plan all along. These clues are unique in that when introduced I was intrigued, but the lack of any forthcoming information concerning them caused me to become apathetic and truly forget about them entirely. Upon explanation of them (this book does a LOT of explaining; see my next rant) they sort of make sense but feel shoehorned in. Which, again, is weird because shoehorning something in usually comes after the fact, not several books before. That whole rabbit trail just to say, if the author knew from the start that this would be the final confrontation of the series, why did she not build it up over time to fully realize its potential? As it stands, it is very difficult to care much about this villain introduced in the final book of the series, explained into the ground (have I mentioned that clunky exposition factors heavily into this book?!), and subsequently defeated with powers unknown until just before.
  • Information Dump (ĭn″fər-mā′shən dump) noun: a boring, clinical, and suspense-breaking form of exposition typically used because due diligence was not done in relation to the development of plot and/or characters previously and must now be accomplished in a few pages. When it comes to exposition, this book is one of the worst offenders. Because the main villain and storyline were not fleshed out properly in the previous four novels, a massive amount of new information had to be conveyed to make the series conclusion work. This information was usually provided in the form of exposition dumps, one character reading things or explaining them to another character. This made the development and plot arcs feel rushed, clinical, and boring, more like reading events in a history book than experiencing them in real time.
  • I have always been critical of the handling of non-main characters in this series (usually they are nerfed), and it was nice to see some of them get more development in this book. Several lingering questions were also answered (sort of), like why Toopka never ages and what the heck is up with Sittiponder (he appears to be called this since he is blind and sits and thinks a lot. Yes, the naming scheme of characters in these books could have been better). As with most elements of this book, these character developments should have been spread across all five books of the series rather than crushed into one volume. Here it feels cluttered and rushed as information is delivered via info dump again and again. Once more, I believe this development was always in the cards based on vague clues early in the series, but the plots for these characters were largely forgotten until the eleventh hour. Why this happened I cannot imagine as these story threads are much more interesting than other things which happened in the series.
  • Kale gets pregnant and has a baby. This is not in and of itself a bad thing; however, this plot point is practically non-existent. The author’s disinterest in the topic is evident as she conveniently makes the gestation period for the species o’rants (of which Kale is one) about one month. The ordeal affects the story exactly 0% and appears to be here just so Kale can wonder “Is this feeling I have well-founded or just a product of my hormones?” Ugh. And to compound how worthless this plot thread is, after the child is born, it is largely dropped from the story.
  • As mentioned previously, the action sequences in this book are abysmal. Perhaps this was done to accommodate younger audiences for whom aggressive action would be inappropriate, but if this were true, why did the previous books have better action? Also, if the book wanted to cater to younger readers, it would have been better to steer clear of such violent confrontations altogether and have the conflict occur in some other medium. This novel, more than any other in the series, could have accomplished that organically since the antagonist(s) are of a more cerebral, shadowy, and insidious nature. A very clever and compelling yet bloodless conflict could have effectively culminated this series, yet Donita resorted to a big slash-and-stab (without the slashing or the stabbing) which feels boring and uninspired.
  • Answering machines are not exciting or cool, even if they operate on magic. Why do I need to include this? Because Donita required the many protagonists to be separated geographically (in my opinion, this was because she had not set up the story properly in the previous books and needed the protagonists to discover a LOT of information very quickly) but also needed them to be in contact with each other (as a plot convenience). And so was invented the magical telephone with the quick addition of the magical telephone answering machine. As a side note, answering machines are not suddenly more interesting when they are made of magic. This is so ridiculous in description and execution that I wish I was making it up. To make matters worse, at one point in the story, the characters needed to fall out of contact with each other (otherwise the plot wouldn’t work), so Donita just had the answering machine break. The only problem is that Kale has a dragon whose talent is fixing broken things. Though logically she should immediately call for said dragon, she conveniently (for the plot) does not. Later her husband asked why she has not utilized said dragon. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about him. I should do that,” Kale responds. Did you forget, Kale? Or was it Donita who forgot? This is a one-sentence-in-editing solution to a booboo which demanded a much longer fix and it feels justifiably lame in its execution.
  • The lightning round:
    • Kale’s mural power (for lack of a better name) is absolutely worthless, a fact really driven home in this volume.
    • It literally took until after chapter 40 for me to realize how this book fit into the grand scheme and, indeed, why it exists at all. That’s a slow burn for you.
    • The plot and characters jump all over the place in an incredibly erratic fashion.
    • “Problems” crop up and then are suddenly fixed with no explanation. For example, Paladin ends up in prison for some reason and then later turns up, having escaped. How this went down or how it impacts the story is a mystery.
    • The attempt to make a big deal of the “leftover” evil influence on Gilda is inconsistent and ham-fisted. It reads poorly and feels very sloppy.
    • This book insists on telling instead of showing which feels especially jarring when what the reader is being told is different than what they are being shown. For example, there are periodic attempts to separate Kale from Bardon due to her lack of social graces, but that distinction doesn’t show up in the scenes, only the exposition.
  • Basically, my overall takeaway is that an author needs to know when to stop. Even storylines intended from the beginning can become poisoned fruit depending on how a series goes. As an author, you cannot simply force things to happen because you want them to. If you want an ending or climax to go a particular way, you must develop, foreshadow, and above all earn it or it just feels cheap and tacked on.