Hey Jared,

My review is a bit late but the book is still good. I’ll be interested to hear what you think when you get to it.

Title: Crown of Vengeance
Series: The Dragon Prophecy Trilogy; Book 1
Author: Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Adult
ROTS Setting: UU, Medieval, Dragons, Higher Magic, Prequel
Synopsis: Learn the truth about the Elven Queen Vielissiar Faricarnon, who was the first to face the Endarkened in battle and the first to bond with a dragon. She worked some of the greatest magics her world has ever known, and paid the greatest Price.
Recommendation: Adult or late teens. I suggest having at least some knowledge of the World of Obsidian before reading this. That’s not required but I feel it would make just an OK experience into a great one.

Being a prequel to some of my favorite books I was obviously nervous about what I should expect from this book. Thankfully that has been laid to rest and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

The book has a very historical feel to it. It’s definitely been written with an emphasis on the significant events in mind with the characters themselves taking a secondary role. The legendary Vielessar Farcarinon is the main character and she is every bit who you’d expect to her to be and from the legend or historical sense it’s spot on. But on a personal level she doesn’t have a lot of texture. The beginning does a lot to give her shape so when things start happening we have a sense of who she is and where she’s coming from, but we’re still lacking much of her internal process or how she feels. None of that’s bad, but might not appeal to everyone, especially with how it differs with the two trilogies already published.

The plot is focused almost entirely on Vielessar and the elves. We get little about the broader world or it’s other inhabitants. This works great since the elves are so far removed from how we see them in the later books. That in itself is fascinating. We see that the elves are deeply divided by caste and house and have fallen into a system of “wars” with rules closer to a game. And with Darkness looming it’s a recipe for annihilation.

All-in-all it’s a solid book but really shines when you’ve got some context. I loved discovering the connections between the various points in time and sort of discovering the bits between what you’d find in something like a history textbook. So as a standalone or something being read first I would be hesitant to recommend it, but as an expansion to the universe I think it’s perfect.

I don’t have immediate plans to read book 2, Blade of Empire, set to come out this Tuesday, Oct.24.2017, but I’m hoping to get to it in the coming couple of months. I’m not in a hurry because the third book isn’t likely to come out until this time next year even if all goes perfectly. So I’ll get to it soon-ish.

Robert

Links

• Mercedes Lackey’s Official Website
• James Mallory’s Official Website
• James Mallory Online Journal – current info on the World of Obsidian