TWH: Section 1: Prologue - 3rd Clara

[Lindsay]

Please keep all discussion to the events and speculation from this section. Please do not discuss events from later chapters. Referring back to events from a previous section/book is fine.

No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you uncheck "Add to my Update Feed" to avoid accidentally spoiling this for your goodreads friends.

This section covers Prologue: Inys, the Last Dragon through to the 3rd Clara chapter. The first sentences of the section are:

The dragon rose.

With every stroke of his great wings, his sinews creaked. Before—only hours before, it seemed—he had flown this same coast, this same air, with ease.

[Suzanne]

And...those are some of the best first sentences ever! Three books developing characters and now we also get a dragon! Love it.

[Lindsay]

More soon. I've done all the breakdown but I've had to leave my desk for an hour or so.

[Suzanne]

Thanks for setting those up! To me, this felt like a pretty seamless continuation of the series. There wasn't a lot of recap, but I don't feel lost. I like what I've seen so far of the dragon.

[Suzanne]

I felt kind of sorry for Inys as the last of his kind, and hope we see more of him and learn what happened to the dragons. It sounded like he had a plan that ended up with him asleep in the cave, and it sounds as if he's been asleep a VERY long time.

I'm glad Marcus is travelling with the players - I like that group - they are really a family.

[Lindsay]

In this section we get Inys discovering that he is the last of the dragons, and Kit and Marcus, having woken him, deciding to return south. Of course, with the people who were hiding the dragon wanting to kill them, it's not a terribly hard choice.

Clara, now ensconced in the manor of Lord Skestinin, continues her clandestine relationship with Vincen Coe and worries about her sons. Jorey is off to pursue Geder's mad vendetta against Cithrin by leading his exhausted army against Porte Olivia. Clara decides to take after Jorey by disguising herself and Vincen Coe as camp followers.

Cithrin arrives back in Porte Olivia. Understandably, she's not particularly welcome, given that she's basically pissed off the most powerful man on the continent. And she's not there very long before Lord Skestellin's Antean navy blockades the harbor.

Geder struggles to deal with Cithrin's humiliating rejection and mentally, he is not at all well. What's new you ask? Well now he's actually having distracted moments that threaten to be full-on psychotic breaks. Yay!

Actually, to be fair, I think Geder's characterization in this book is far superior to the previous one, where he really was indistinguishable from a frothing madman. In this one he spends much more time apart from Basrahip and you actually see him do more human things including interactions with Aster and Jorey's wife Sabiha (next section).

[Suzanne]

I thought Clara's finding out that her priest son can detect lies was well-done (and coming to terms with how he has changed is sad).

[Bill]

Inys semms like he might be a good solution to the spider priest but end up being a bigger problem afterwards. His ideas in the last Marcus section of filling the skies with dragons again seems terrifying. When he talked about restoring the souls of the dragons stored in the created race was he talking about the Timzinae or Jasuru?

[Lindsay]

Well, he was drunk ...

[Suzanne]

I didn't catch the stored souls part . hmmmm...interesting. I like Inys - he is very arrogant, and has every right to mourn.

[Bill]

"They are all gone, but I will redeem my error. My workshop will be rebuilt. Those parts of ourselves we put into your kinds. I can retrieve them. I will retrieve them."

So rereading it kind of answered my question. It does sound kind of like a drunk boast.

[Teanka]

I liked the beginning of this book much more than the previous ones. Much more has happened, but anyway I guess the dragon made all the difference to me. And I like the way Clara changed, she should be a more active player from now on and is currently on the move. It was interesting to know that Morade created the spiders, and not some outer force or accident. I'm very curious about Inys' past.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Teanka wrote: "I liked the beginning of this book much more than the previous ones. Much more has happened, but anyway I guess the dragon made all the difference to me. And I like the way Clara changed, she shoul..."

You can rarely go wrong with a dragon.

[Teanka]

That's true :).