The Last DragonLord

Series: Standalone

Author: Joanne Bertin

Genre: Fantasy

Book Description:

An Evil Returns …

The Fellowship is a myth. A spectre from a scary story to frighten children by firelight. A dark tale from the far, far past.

The Prince-Consort of Cassori dies in a tragic hunting accident.

The Fellowship is not a myth.

The Queen of Cassori drowns in a boat accident on a calm river.

The Fellowship is all too real.

The young prince wastes away in his bed, a victim of a mysterious illness.

The Fellowship has returned, and even the power of the mighty Dragonlords will not stand in its way. For this evil has been lying in wait a long time, and nothing can stop its plans now. Nothing

Dragonlord Linden Rathan is the last-born of a race of immortal were-dragons. He has spent six hundred years alone, searching endlessly for his soultwin while his fellow Dragonlords sit deep in their mountain keep at the crown of the world, watching over humanity’s Five Kingdoms.

When the Queen of Cassori dies under mysterious circumstances, Linden and the other Dragonlords are drawn once again into mortal affairs, this time to prevent civil war as two claimants vie for regency.

This seemingly simple task is complicated by the machinations of the Fellowship, a secret society of true-humans long thought dead – the return of which is steeped in a dark and terrible conspiracy to usurp the throne.

As the battle for the rule of Cassori escalates, Linden finds himself drawn deep into the dark plans of the Fellowship, which holds the power to ultimately destroy his immortal life.

But hope arrives in the form of a beautiful young ship captain named Mauryanna. Dark of hair and fiery of spirit, she may be the only one who can help Linden bring Cassori back from the brink of chaos – and may be his last chance for happiness, unless the Fellowship gets to her first ….

Review:

The Last Dragonlord is a wild ride. There were definitely times when I found the multitude of perspectives overwhelming – some of them you only get a few pieces of here and there, but it’s like you get at least a little perspective from everyone who’s relevant to the plot, or at least nearly. Nonetheless, I found it engaging, and it did not take too long for me to get know all the voices so I could keep them straight.

And, more or less, keep straight what was happening.

It was interesting to get to know about the dragonlords, and neat how they’re all Marked in one way or another, sometimes with something that would be seen as a disability, sometimes simply with a difference. The Lady, the oldest of the dragonlords, is albino. Another dragonlord has heterochromia (eyes of two different colors). Dragonlords are made when a human soul and a dragon soul divide and join together, and – the relationship some of them seem to have within themselves was interesting, and I liked, but skies, one of the things I was wondering the whole way through once I figured it out is if there’d ever been a dragonlord who was actually friends with his dragon half. Who shared control and had a partnership, since apparently the way it normally works is mostly the humansoul half “lives” until they grow tired of life and then they die and the dragon just lives. I’d think it would happen sometimes, bonded like that, that they’d be friends. And I also wonder what it’s like for a dragon who’s only half a soul to live alone?

It also features Llysanyins, a really cool kind of horse. I really enjoyed Shan, who is Linden’s horse, and has a lot of spirit and personality – honestly, he’s the only Llysanyin you really get to meet in the book, but they’re cool and SO intelligent!

In general, the book is hectic. As I said, it’s a wild ride. There’s a lot happening. There’s a lot of confusion, and mystery, and complicating plotting, and one thing happening, and another thing happening, and personal angst. For all the excitement and epic action, there’s a fair amount of focus on Linden’s personal experiences and character, and there are a handful of cozy interludes. I think the book feels even more hectic than it is because of all the character perspectives, some of them rather minor, and some of them quite villainous.

The fated mates trope is really leaned into in this one, and I could see the way it was handled annoying some people, but I personally found the explanation given in the way the dragonlords are created to be satisfactory and even interesting (though I think if I read a lot of books like this, it would start to get old easily). I can’t say that I really felt the chemistry between Linden and his soultwin, but I also didn’t feel a lack of it, and I really like the character who is his soultwin a lot. She may be one of the most vivid ones in the book to me. She’s got a lot of spunk and personality and strength and drive, and I truly enjoyed the way she handled herself and stood up to others.

It was also kind of amusing and frustrating at once the way she has a hunch about someone being responsible for having done something, and she’s RIGHT, but none of the other characters will believe her ….

Though it was soon fairly easy to keep the characters straight, I didn’t find that most of them really leapt off the page at me, even when I’d finished the book. I did appreciate the depth behind Linden’s character and history though. He was already a man, and more what modern society would think of as middle-aged though he was a bit younger than that in years, in keeping with a society where children became adults sooner, when he first Changed and discovered he was a dragonlord. All those centuries ago, he had a complex history, people he knew and loved, people who did not care so much for him, battles he fought, training as a mercenary, and even some rather magical and perhaps epic adventures that have left him with some traumas. And that comes through in the story. It informs his responses, his reactions, freezing in terror sometimes, and his emotions.

And while few of the characters were really vivid, many of them had a nice complexity that was well-established given the small amount of time there was to spend with all of them. The principal villains are truly despicable, and I enjoyed the fact they weren’t given pitiable sob stories to excuse their behavior. But alongside them plenty of other people engaged in rather despicable villainy, even if they don’t go quite to their depths, and one gets a tiny window into the complex maze of things that have made them what they are, and the humanity they still have.

Another thing I really enjoyed, was how love gives Linden the strength to break a nearly unbreakable control-spell placed on him.

I did find that a few things seemed a little overdone. The implication by another dragonlord that he bet with her over whether he’s going to have an adventure with evil mages over what’s supposed to be a relatively routine assignment was just too on the nose. I also found the way he tries to sacrifice himself to save someone who really has never done him any good, even though placing himself in danger will hurt the person he really loves, to be … overdone and out of place. It just didn’t really fit Linden, and felt more like the story was going for a “rushing feel” and a moment for people to get emotionally excited about, instead of being true to itself.

Altogether, this is a wild ride, great for people who like a fast-paced epic fantasy adventure with dragons and evil mages, but one with very few fight scenes, that instead puts the spotlight on the complexities of people’s relationships and choices, and what different people are willing or able to see. If you like fantasy with somewhat older protagonists with rich (but not confusing or overwhelming) backstories and neat world-building, you may also want to check this one out.