Frustration, Part 4

So, I ran quickly to said library and plucked the sequel off of the shelf and dove in.
When Dragons Rage was pretty much more of the same.

Stackpole created another character for us to view the world through: the heir of the Evil Chytrine, Isuara, or something like that.

The first third of the book involves the trial of Crow and the contrivances to set him at liberty. And while Stackpole’s solution to this dilemma was not unimaginative, if felt forced. Like an easy out. I felt the solutions where decent, but I couldn’t help but think that there must have been a better, cleaner way. It was like a puzzle worth two dollars being sold for ten cents.

Basically, the afore mentioned Golden Wolf, a princess in her own right, with the help of her friends, fakes a marriage with Crow, a man who held her in his arms when she was a baby. This "marriage" elevates Crow from vassal to noble and therefore warrants him another trial, as he had been tried and convicted in abstention. At this point I scratched my head: "This is a medieval-esque world and they try their accused in abstention?" But that’s beside the point. Now, I don’t particularly have a problem with age gap relationships but this solution, as I said above, felt contrived. It was like Stackpole needed a way to get Crow off the hook quickly and pair his Affirmative Action character up with someone.

During the trial, Will is poisoned by a bad guy; one of Evil Chytrine’s lieutenants. But he is then saved by Evil Chytrine’s heir and a dragon in human form (not Evil Chytrine’s heir). The Heir wasn’t really responsible for her actions nor did she know that Will was her mother’s nemesis, and we don’t find out about the dragon until the end of the book.

So Will comes back from the brink; only different. He finds that he is perpetually cold. And something else. And then the trial comes to an end. And just as Crow is being set at liberty, a new character enters. Only this one is (in hind sight) refreshingly different: we never get to see the world through her eyes. Thank goodness. This new character has come for Will, so that he and his comrades can liberate her country from the Scourge From the North, the Evil Chytrine.

A couple chapters after Stackpole created Isaura I began to see that she and Will would be paired up. Or at least, I thought that they should be. But then entered Sayce, the previously mentioned new character. She was described as a red headed beauty. So Isaura, who Will never really met, did not stand a chance.

So the comrades set off to liberate Sayce’s country. Along the way they encounter the enemy and that something-else-different-about-Will is exposed. It seems that he has developed the incredible ability to make commands that must be obeyed.

In the only moving part of the entire thriteen hundred page story, Sayce is knocked down in a fight and Will, who has been injured and is bleeding all over the place, leaps to her defense. He stands over her unconscious body and shouts to the enemy:

BY MY BLOOD, YOU WILL NOT PASS! Lo and behold, anywhere that Will’s blood has fallen, the enemy cannot get through. So he starts splattering his blood all over the place, effectively, temporarily holding off the assault. Long enough to gather up the fallen damsel and beat a hasty retreat so that his comrades can regroup and set about the annihilation of their enemies.

As a Christian who believes that the life is in the blood and believes in the Power of the Blood of Jesus Christ, I thought it was rather interesting that in the midst of all this written darkness, and believe me it was, would be a pinpoint of light. Here is a character that has been prophesied to be the downfall of evil incarnate who discovers a powerful weapon in his blood. I don’t believe in coincidence. And I don’t believe that Mr. Stackpole even knew what he stumbled upon and then promptly forgot. Because Will never used this new found ability again, nor did he or his comrades explore what other capabilities he might have come back from the brink with.

To be continued . . .