Gain Your Copy Skybowl (Dragon Star, #3) Articulated By Melanie Rawn Formatted As Paper Copy

loved this series. I laughed. I cried. I LOVED theser characters. This series is awesome! a magnificent book, the war is on and though many favourite people lose their lives its a great ending to an epic series.
Andry and pol work together but then the need for power is too much!! love the way melanie rawn ties up all the loose ends at the end of the book, a great ending to a great series.
am going to miss these books!! nothing to add see review of The Dragon Prince

I seriously cried when this series ended.
Great book and series. Should still hold up well today for new readers who want to be engrossed in great character development and good story telling.
It is a toss up for me on the best epic fantasy series, I think my favorites would be Rawn, Tolkien, Williams amp Eddings but had to follow my heart and say this series was the best for me.
With her widely acclaimed fantasy trilogy, Dragon Prince, Melanie Rawn opened an enchanted gateway to a spellbinding universe of Sunrunner's magic and sorcerous evil, telling the tale of one man's crusade to bring peace to a land divided into often warring kingdoms.
In the first two novels of the bestselling Dragon Star trilogy, the peaceful reign of High Prince Rohan was shattered by a mysterious invasion force which began a devastating campaign against the people of the Desert and the Sunrunners.
And now, Skybowl brings this magnificent epic work of fantasy to its dramatic close,

With High Prince Pol's wife Meiglan held prisoner by the Warlord of the enemy, and Skybowl keep purposefully abandoned to this deadly foe, Pol's mother Sioned leads a daring mission into the castle, using all her years of experience as High Princess in a cunning attempt to strike at the heart of the invasion force.
And even as Sinned carries out this perilous plan, Pol and his cousin Andry, Lord of the Sunrunners of Goddess Keep, are forced into an uneasy alliance.
For only if they can overcome their longtime rivalry and suspicions of one another and draw upon their combined powers of Sunrunning and Sorcery, do they stand any chance of defeating the invaders who have sworn to destroy the people of the Desert down to the last newborn child.
Where do I start Maarken, . . Rohannon Sethric Chayla Meiglan Rislyn Kazander Sioned Audry Meath Chay Tobin Alasen Sionell Beth Tilal

It was a stunning ending with the final battle leaving me feeling wrung out and yet oddly satisfied.
All of these characters just made the book for me, Rawn's talent for making the reader feel so immersed in the world is astounding, I wanted this series to end more epically than it did, It was so close, I could feel it building it up, I knew shit was about to go down.
Some shit did go down, but the final battle did not strike the right chords for me.


As was my complaint with the last two books, there are too many characters with too many similar names.
Im beginning to wonder if I was more willing to keep characters straight when I was younger.
Or had a better memory, I need them to have distinct characteristics and distinct introductions or they are gone, That was another problem I could keep the names of castles straight, but not who was in charge of them.
Often someone would be brought into a scene in the context of what they ruled and I always had no idea except for a few characters, of course, where it was really obvious.
Like Pol, Chiana, and Andry, One of the denouements was the giving of land and castles to various vassals and I really badly wanted to skim.
Who cares who becomes whose heir The series is over! I also could not keep track of which minor characters were Sunrunners, though again, some of those were obvious and I had no problem such as Rohannon or Meig.


In general the series has a tendency to tell us about an event that could happen, build up to it, and then fizzle.
This happened multiple times with things about Andry and the trickle of information the reader gets about why the Vellantim are even there.
The build ups became meaningless as their climax was hardly worthy of the term,

However, I will say this, I have a thing for people breaking down and accepting who they are, It gets me every damn time, Its one of the reasons why I find The Dragon Reborn so epic, why I love super hero origin stories, and really why I love the whole damn genre.
So when someone heaves that breath, squares their shoulders, and says, “Ok, Ill do it,” I cannot even.
There was that moment in this book, Its the sort of moment that makesbooks of fantasy worth reading, To me, it was the climax, as the final confrontation was not very impressive, Likeat all. Likeit was really disappointing. But the moment Pol accepts who he is, that was worth it, You cant make epic like that up, You have to slowly experience every damn page that comes before it, and then, THEN it is truly epic.


Other than that moment, though, the rest of the denouement was disappointing, Though I do thoroughly approve of what happened with Sionell, I love the main cast but there were too many threads, Still good but I hope you wern't attched to all the characters, . . I'm saddened to see this series come to an end, Very well told, and intriguing every step of the way, I laughed, I cried and I worried, I couldn't wait to finish, yet dreaded finishing it, The final book in the Sunnerrunner's world, It does not dissapoint. The battles are furiuos, the intrigue thick, and the characters engaging as always,

While I wasn't particularly happy with everyone who ends up dead and those who remain alive it is a war after all not everybody makes it.
I do love this book, It's dufficult to say which I like more in this trilogy Stronghold or Skybowl, At least Meiglan redeems herself and isn't quite as stupid or insipid as she was when she first was introduced and Pol grows up some as well.


I like that the end of the book, the end of the war, is also a new beginning which the readers are left to imagine for themselves.


I always feel a little sad when I get to the end of this book, closing the pages on a whole world and a whole set of characters, but that just goes to show how great the books and the writing are.


edited for grammar This is me right now:



The wonderful thing about Melanie is her ability to yank the tears right out of me, even for characters I either barely know or don't like all that much.
Spoilers galore coming up!

Take Andry, for example.
His actions often fill me with rage murdering innocent people just because of their heritage, impregnating teenage Sunrunners without so much as discussing it with them, colossal arrogance in general but I cry like a baby when he dies, every time I read it.
In fact, of all the many, many deaths in this series, his is the one that hits me the hardest and Andrev is a close second, even though I don't have much of an opinion about him one way or the other.


And then of course there's Sioned, Holy cow. What do I even say about that,

Basically, the whole ending of this book, starting with the battle at Skybowl, blows me away.
And the banquet at the end is my favorite thing Melanie has ever written, Sometimes when I need something to make me happy I just open the book to the part where they're getting dressed and read onward from there.
I want to go to that banquet so badly,

The only thing that bugs me every time I read this is that although the mirror is amazing, we don't get nearly enough detail about it! I would have loved to be in on Thassalante's explanation, rather than coming back in after it's done, and we never do find out why Rosseyn's lady who I guess was also named Lallante that's never made especially clear betrayed him the way she did.
And HOW MUCH DID CAMIGWEN KNOW It doesn't make sense that she would have been totally clueless if her family is still so honored among the diarmadh'im but that's never addressed.
It bothers me to death, because that mirror is fascinating to me and I want to know as much about it as possible.


Basically this book is amazing and I want to

live there, There are too many editions of this book and my comments are scattered all over the place and it's very annoying.
Anyhow, here are my accumulated thoughts with spoilers:

The whole banquet scene at the end makes me so very happy every time I read it, and that has been a lot of times, let me tell you.

At one point towards the end, Melanie says Beth sits down in Ruala's chair, that would have been Beth's if Sorin had lived.
Only they're at Skybowl, which was never Sorin's, Oops.
I've always been very frustrated that we don't get more information about Rosseyn and the mirror, including exactly who put him in there and why.
There's some sketchy info but nothing terribly specific and most of it happens offscreen, so to speak.
I want more!!!
It also bugs me that nobody wonders how Camigwen came to be in possession of that mirror and how much she knew about it.

Meiglan is the absolute best,
I've read this book a hundred million times, and I JUST figured out what Sioned is talking about when she says she and Aldiara have the same problem with their hair.
It's because she chopped it all off and it's an awkward length, That line always confused me before,
Jeni and Sethric need to break up,
As much as I dislike Andry as a person, not as a character he is an awesome character, I bawl my head off at his death every single time.
It's so well written.
What a perfect ending, Epic ending to an epic series, It's been so long since I last read these, I've really enjoyed my extended reread! I must have been of a more spry mind when I was a teenager because each time I read them again I find it harder to keep all the family and political connections straight! I didn't even really try this time Gettin old!

Mel's writing has its flaws oy, the fat shaming!, but the good massively outweighs the bad.
The magic system is so unique, welldefined and downright cool, The dragons are awesome. The themes of morality, duty, religion, faith, honour and more are so rich and nuanced, I could go on, but honestly you should just read them, Another behemoth of a book and Im so glad to finally have resolution for this series! Rawn does a good job in wrapping up all the loose strings so that there are no lingering questions after this book however, I found the book itself to only be okay.
There are a lot of plot points that dont really make sense, so I felt that a lot of it was forced and some things that happened didnt really “need” to happenwhile I understood why Rawn chose to end things in a certain way, she didnt craft a believable enough plot to make it seem genuine.


However, she tackled a huge amount in this book and I appreciated being able to keep all the different story lines apart in my headshes very good at keeping things clear so I didnt get confused while reading.
Overall, I like this series, but I was underwhelmed by some of the final conclusions,

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