Dragon Prince

3.5
will review soon at www.fantasyliterature.com

This is one of the best fantasy books I've ever read. And it's the one that (for me) that puts Melanie Rawn up there with the best. The setting, with its magic and political intrigue, was unique and very much brought to life by the good flow and pacing of the writing. The characters, their interactions with each other, their tribulations, their personalities, were all brought to life and made very real and very believable.

Trigger warnings (some on-page and some referred/implied): Rape (both male and female), attempted rape, miscarriage, infanticide, body-shaming, fertility issues

Where do I start with this book? It was all kinds of jarring but also incredibly fascinating with its unique magic system and the way it portrayed its female characters. When jumping into this, it was really important for me to keep in mind that this was written and published in the 80's. There were a lot of tropes and plot elements and trigger warnings here that felt distinctly 80's to me. It's something that can understandably take away from people's enjoyment of the book and turn them away from it, which is perfectly valid IMO, given how intense the book can get. But if you can somehow look past it and are willing to put yourself in a frame of mind to appreciate it for what it is, this book has a lot to offer.

The book can really be divided into the first two thirds (Parts 1 and 2) and the last third (Part 3). There's a huge shift in the tone, the story, the characters' relationships and dynamics with each other, the concerns of the characters, and even the pacing of the story between those two segments. In Parts 1 and 2, the politics is interesting but also fairly straightforward, while in Part 3 it really shifts into overdrive. There's a lot more going on to the point where I found it difficult to keep things straight and stay on top of what was going on in the military arena, but at least it was still fairly easy to follow the more personal politics between the cast of characters.

The most prominent thing that comes to mind when discussing this book is really its treatment of women. In Parts 1 and 2, it was jarring in that almost every female character we encounter are primarily concerned about their marriageability and/or their ability to conceive, particularly to bear sons, with only perhaps one notable exception - Rohan's aunt, Andrade. For that reason, Andrade was the most interesting character to me for that whole segment. Part 3 changes a little because of how the story shifts. We see a lot more agency with the female characters and how they strive to gain control some way or another. There's still a lot of focus on childbearing and begetting sons, but it's also brought down to very gritty and painful realities of that particular function instead of just an abstract concept of value. I particularly liked how it was the prince who was in distress and the princess who had to rally her armies to go and save him.

Part 3 was also where the story got really, really rough and intense, and where so many of the trigger warnings start coming up. Really bad things happen to our main cast of characters and the book doesn't pull any punches with that. This is probably where I could see many people DNFing and I wouldn't blame anyone for that - it is rough. There's nothing much to say to justify it, really. All I can say is that I stuck it through because nothing about it felt gratuitous or like slotted in for the shock factor. All the bad things that happen or the detailed gritty scenes felt like they genuinely contributed to the story and drove the characters' development forward, and for that I could make myself go on.

I wasn't a huge fan of our two main characters, Rohan and Sioned, in the first two Parts tbh. Rohan seemed a bit too much like a Gary Stu while Sioned felt overly focused on her role as a future wife and mother. Their attraction for each other also felt a bit like an insta-love and insta-lust situation. What saved it for me was that their match was fraught with political machinations and it was really interesting to see how they were both going to navigate those treacherous waters to find their way to each other. In Part 3 was where my opinion of them improved dramatically. We see them evolve a lot as characters, but we also really see their relationship tested and how they work things out with each other. They sometimes don't, and they sometimes need external parties to come in and slap some sense into them, which is all very real for couples in real life. By the end of the book, I was thoroughly rooting for this relationship.

The magic system of this book is also another thing that kept me going. It's so unique! We have a bunch of magicky people called Sunrunners, and while their most basic skill is to conjure and wield a special kind of Fire, they can also use light of any kind (but most commonly sunlight) to do some kind of astral projection and spy on things from a great distance and to send messages to each other. Every person also has “colours”, like light refracted through a prism, and I like to think of it as your own unique QR code. Knowing someone's colours is a way for a Sunrunner to be able to reach them by telepathy, or to get a grip on their soul somehow. I'm interested to find out more about this magic system in future books.

I realise that for a book called Dragon Prince, there's been a distinct lack of dragons in my review. They do play a fairly important role in the story and I was a fan of how the attitude towards dragons was portrayed in this book. Instead of them being always beasts to be hunted or worshipped, Rohan treats them instead as simply beautiful animals on the brink of extinction from mindless and pointless hunting for bragging rights, and seeks to reverse that by outlawing dragon-hunting at the end of the book. It's a pretty unique attitude in dragon books as far as I know, although granted I'm not very experienced in this subgenre.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to lovers of epic fantasy with dragons and for anyone looking for a unique magic system and plenty of politicking, although be warned about the grim story elements and trigger warnings before going in.