Mistress of Dragons

Fairly predictable. The most jarring moment, for me, was realizing someone didn’t pay attention: the set-up included an abbey (labeled a “monastery” throughout the book, but okay) where 25 women serve the Dragon Mistress. Sixteen of them are virgins - think priestesses of Diana - and there are nine who serve a reproductive purpose. These are referred to by their sisters as “cows.” But that’s a whole ‘nother problem with the story.

Later in the story, “breeding night” includes twelve women selected to have babies. That discrepancy is just sloppy editing.

I’ll give the second book a look to see if it improves.

This book begins a trilogy of books dealing with the land of Seth and the realm of dragons. A woman in Seth claims the title of Mistress of Dragons, showing her ability to propell invading dragons from the realm. The dragons suspect that this is a ruse for another problem that they've tried to deal with for several centuries, but they need a human to do their dirty work. They send the Walker, Draconus, on a quest with the king of a local city to find out what is going on. They stumble across a plot that breaks the very laws of dragon kind. I enjoyed the book, the concept that this presented. Ms Weis gave us a strong land, well thought out characters and prepared us for an adventure through the land. The primary characters tend to fall show more into two categories of D&D lore: Lawful Good (The King) and Chaotic Neutral (Draconus). It flowed well and seemed to not have issues within the text.

From the audio, this reader has a soothing voice, which allowed me better access to the story. With only one person reading the entire book, listening to the discs didn't cause issues when they switched from one chapter to the next. show less

Margaret Weis may well be considered the Queen of the modern era of fantasy at least by me that is as I cut my teeth reading the Dragonlance series which really made me realized that I enjoyed reading this kind of stuff. Here she cuts out on her own and creates a new fantasy world. In Mistress of Dragons, we see the political intrigue usually reserved for humans, applied to the Dragons. Nice concept and while I did enjoy this novel for the typical fantasy fair (I'm a sucker for novels with dragons in them), I think it probably could have been done better. I kept waiting for something to really grab my attention and let me know that this novel is going to be something special. Maybe that will come in books 2 or 3 of the trilogy if I show more stick around that long. I enjoyed it enough to continue on in the trilogy, but will withhold final judgement until I've finished the series. show less

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Mistress of Dragons is an interesting story with some likable heroes and and excellent villains. The heroes are the humans and their dragon allies, but the humans don't realize that dragons are their friends because the villains are a couple of dragons gone bad. Very bad. The good dragons concoct a plot which uses humans to conquer the bad dragons. Mistress ends with an unexpected plot twist.

This story is well-told except for that annoying conjunction omission problem that bugs me. For example, on a few consecutive pages, we find these constructions:

"She closed her eyes, shut out the sight of them."
"Melisande raised her head slightly, cast him a furtive glance."
"She'd been planning to slip away, show more try to go back to her people."
"Draconas poked and prodded, found no other injuries."

That drives me insane (especially when it's done as often as Margaret Weis does it). But if that doesn't bug you, and you don't mind a rape scene and a lesbian love affair, you'll probably enjoy this book. I listened to it on audiobook and it was read well and the story is compelling enough that I've ordered the second one in audiobook format, too. I'm going to give it a chance, but I'm not so hooked that I can't drop it in the middle if it doesn't keep me entertained.
add book/author My review / What I learned from this book
2.5 stars Master of Dragons, the final book in Margaret Weis's Dragonvarld trilogy was a tasty but sloppy finale -- like a cheesecake that didn't quite set. This last book wraps things up, as we knew it would, and everything is finally well in the world, as we knew it would be. There are some fine moments (Draconas showing tenderness to a female dragon, Ven finds a family, Marcus falls in love) and even some hilarious ones (Draconas darning socks, Evelina's ironic fate). Characterization, especially of the bad guys, continues to be a high point, and the writing is nothing brilliant, but certainly pleasant enough. But this otherwise entertaining novel suffers from internal inconsistencies: * On page 38, Draconas is said to wear "the guise of a human male in his thirties," and 5 pages later he is described as "a human male of undetermined years." * Draconas has cast the illusion that he is a little girl while staying in DragonKeep. He is able to eavesdrop on adults because of his keen dragon hearing. But, later, we are told that as a little girl "his hearing was so reduced that it seemed his ears were stuffed with wax." * Much of what Anora (Prime Minister of the dragon parliament) says to the parliament is illogical and none of the dragons ever notice. For example, she says she should have removed Draconas from his post as "walker" because he was starting to become emotionally involved with humans, but she didn't remove him because he was the best walker they'd ever had because he was able to stay detached from humans. Then she says that she became involved in Maristara and Grald's plot 200 years ago because humans had become such a threat (she cites their canons), but a few lines later she says that because their plot went awry, the humans created canons (a few years ago). Sometimes she indicates that the canons are a threat which, though they are no threat, show that humans are, for the first time in their history, preparing to fight dragons. There also seem to be inconsistencies about dragon magic vs dragon blood, who can see through illusions and who can't, and to what extent thoughts can be shielded from others with dragon magic. These sorts of "rules" seem to be conveniently flexible. For example, one of the monks is able to see through illusions, yet he doesn't recognize Draconas? Then there are the unbelievable elements. For example, Anora's betrayal just doesn't ring true -- it sounds like a forced plot twist. And, Anora says that to keep their plot secret from Draconas, they had to kill some good dragons (which she seems to regret) when, if they had just killed Draconas instead, everything would have been fine. And it didn't make sense to keep the plot from the dragon parliament if the purpose of it was to protect the dragons from the might-someday-be-threatening humans. It would have made immensely more sense, and been a lot less stressful, to just go to the parliament and say "hey, these humans want to kill us -- let's kill them first." That seems a lot easier and a lot more likely to be successful than to embark on a 200 year breeding program in order to try to figure out if they might someday rule the humans with half-human, half-dragon creatures and a pack of mad monks. (And let's not forget that the humans weren't even starting to threaten the dragons until AFTER the breeding program started.) (And let's not forget that Anora even says herself that the humans are not actually threatening yet -- they just might be in the future.) The whole thing just seems sloppy. Half-baked. I listened to this on audiobook. The reader, a woman, did a great job with the female voices. At first I thought she was doing a great job with the male voices too, because her voice for Grald, the first male speaker, was excellent -- really slimy. Unfortunately, she used the same slimy voice for every male character in the entire book. My overall opinion of this series: Unless you've just got a thing for dragons, I'd recommend choosing something better. Read more Margaret Weis book reviews at Fantasy Literature show less

I’ve read all three books in the trilogy and this is my review of all three.
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Book 1: It took a bit to get into the story. I felt like there was too much information being given before I could appreciate the information. I got to about 2/3rds and then went back and listened to the 1st 2 CDs and it made so much more sense.

I still don't know who the spy for the parliament is. Grald confuses me. He seems to have just been there in the cave. Was he introduced earlier and I missed it? I believe they said Draconas was the only human/dragon but it seems as they are saying so is Grald.

Book 2: This answered my unanswered questions from book 1 so that is. But my new questions are why aren't Marcus and Ven crazy show more like the Monks, instead they are "special"? They were created with the same format I believe. I don't understand why Ven is cruel sometimes and compassionate other times. I don't see his motive for being cruel, it seems out of character for him. And, I can't wait to see Eva-Leena get what's coming to her. I hate that girl!

I don't really understand why this has to be a trilogy. Why couldn't it just be one long story? The first little part of this story was a re-telling the last part of book 2. Often word for word.

I will read book 3 to see how it wraps up.

Book 3: I was bored. The story went on too long. Nothing amazing was introduced in the third book and conflict resolution wasn't exciting. There was resolution but I see no reason why it needed to be spread out among three books. I would not recommend the trilogy to anyone.

I can't figure out the cover either (re: book 3’s cover). Doesn't match the story. I see Draconas & Sorrow I believe. Who is the male & what is Sorrow doing? I don't remember her doing anything like that in the book. show less

I must say I was delightfully surprised by this one. Hang in there past the first chapter. I'm very glad I did. BEWARE: For those 'sensitive souls'...there is a lesbian (just brushed on, nothing graphic, no details) & a brief rape (not much in the way of graphic/detail there either). BUT...they play an integral part in the story. It doesn't get graphic in either topic. The worst it gets is when she mentions her lover (that's all) & the rape takes a whole minute out of the book. They didn't bother me at all but I thought I would warn you as some people may be disturbed by these things.

I don't think it's listed as YA (maybe it is) but I don't think I would have a problem if my older (like 16+) wanted to read it.

Not good enough to continue reading the series.