Anne Leonard’s debut novel isn’t just a fantasy epic, it’s a story of discovery. The main characters, Corin and Tam, discover their place in their kingdoms, their hidden talents, and a blossoming and impossible love for each other, while at the same time the reader discovers the author’s intricate world and its magic, all acting as the backdrop to a tale of plots, betrayals, marauding armies, and hidden agendas.
And also there are dragons.
We’re dropped into a story already in progress as Prince Corin is literally pounced on by a dragon and its rider. The dragons used to belong to Corin’s home kingdom of Caithenor, before they were somehow brought under the control of Emperor Hadon of Mycene. The dragons have been used for decades to keep all of the neighboring kingdoms under Hadon’s control, and Corin has no idea why he was singled out for a cryptic task: free the dragons. Corin doesn’t even have a chance to figure out what that means before the dragon’s rider forces him to forget the whole incident for now, leaving him with just the overwhelming sense that something is very, very wrong.
Corin was the first pleasant surprise in this book. I’ve gotten so used to fantasy princes who are entitled brats, unprepared or unwilling to be the royal heir, or who have horrible family members crushing their dreams or plotting to kill them (and that’s when the prince isn’t plotting to kill the king himself.) But Corin isn’t just a good prince, he’s a good person. He knows he’ll one day take over from his father (although not exactly looking forward to it), he’s fair and kind to the people around him, and he’s even a damn good swordsman. And he’s surrounded by a supportive family that he actually likes, especially his delightful-sounding sister who we don’t get to see nearly enough of in this book.
If there’s one way that Corin rebels against his position, it’s his relationship with Tam.
Tam was another nice surprise. Several other reviewers have mentioned that she’s one of those female characters who’s too perfect to be believed. And she is, sort of. She’s a doctor’s daughter, so she’s intelligent and well-educated, much moreso than most of the women in this medieval-type setting. But she doesn’t think that makes her better than everyone around her (she’s a commoner after all, staying as a guest in the royal court at the invitation of a sibling who married up, so she doesn’t have any misconceptions about where she ranks in society.) She’s also staggeringly beautiful, but fortunately she doesn’t have any Mary-Sue qualities, like refusing to believe she’s beautiful, or having some kind of disadvantage-that-isn’t-really-a-disadvantage.
Well, she does have a bad habit of speaking without thinking, and since she has a very low threshold for bullshit that usually means she ends up saying something impertinent (and generally pretty funny) before she can catch herself. She’s embarrassed herself doing this several times, like when she runs into the prince in the library and says something flip, revealing herself to be one of the only women in court who can see Corin as a person instead of just a title.
Before you think this story involves a couple of teenagers spending the entire book miserable because they’ll forever be apart, both Corin and Tam are refreshingly realistic about their future. There’s no way Corin would ever be allowed to marry, no chance whatsoever. Sooo, why not meet for a secret dinner, or wander the palace grounds by starlight, or sneak away from the prince’s security detail to go to a county fair? It’s a beautifully direct relationship that grows so gradually and naturally: Tam’s incapable of flattery, and Corin won’t treat Tam like a subject, and neither of them are willing to let the other get away with anything less than total honesty, even to be polite.
And when Tam discovers a hidden power as a seer, it just makes her even more valuable to Corin when the block on his memories starts fading, and he begins to realize how the dragons have changed him.
The author sets a lovely stage for this story, with elaborate descriptions of the palace and everyone’s clothes. (She goes into a lot of detail about the clothes, but it’s done organically and not nearly as annoyingly as some other authors *cough*Laurel Hamilton*cough*). Anne Leonard has put a lot of effort into creating a fully realized world, instead of just another Tolkien-clone, so she beautifully illuminates the larger things like the geography of the continent and the surrounding kingdoms, and the smaller things like the palace architecture and – in one of my favorite scenes – the nighttime carnival Corin and Tam attend in costume, surrounded by a acrobats and fire-jugglers and a chaotic mix of everyday charlatans and real magic.
And before you think I’ve forgotten, there are the dragons. Anne Leonard has created something new with these; not quite McCaffery or Martin or Dragonlance, but a little bit of each of those and their own brand of magic. Much like Tam’s Seer-visions, they speak mostly in disjointed images, so they come across as very much an alien race with a way of doing things that doesn’t involve too much compassion or loyalty. And even though they’re the focal point for the story, we don’t see nearly enough of the dragons that we get tired of them, or even understand them.
The magic in this book is very complex, so much so that it can overwhelm the plot a little. And even with so much going on I would still have liked to see some of the side-plots expanded on. (There were at least two times where I thought, “Oo, this person’s going to be an interesting antagonist. Aaaand now they’re gone. That was fast.”) The book is still an incredible mix of war and political intrigue, fantasy and romance, and dragons. Anne Leonard has confirmed that this is a standalone book (this makes me happy; I think my love of short-stories has translated to a love of self-contained books, rather than an endless parade of sequels), but that she’s also possibly working on another story set in the same world. There’s still enough that we haven’t seen of this world to make that an excellent idea.
And maybe the next book will have even more of the dragons.