Customer Reviews

Sea Dragon Heir (The Chronicles of Magravandias, Book 1)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have loved Storm's writing for several years now. The Wreaththu books, the Grigori books are marvels -- they take speculative fiction into entirely new directions with daring, vision, and (most importantly to me) a wonderous writing style that few have matched. She is a Romantic writer of the old definition and this book shows it best -- the beauty, the horror, the claustrophobia, the decadance. I must admit, however, that I am glad to hear this is the beginning of a trilogy because there is not only no sense of closure to this book, but indeed it ends with a gaping wound.

This is not to say the book is bad, far from it. Not only are the characters intriguing, but the setting is marvelous and, once again, Storm Constantine takes on a task that few would dare in such settings -- she squarely hits Neo-Paganism at its roots (or lack thereof). The worship of the sea serpents is central to the whole book and makes the most fascinating study as you see it first from one angle, then from another, but rarely whole on or at once.

At times, however, as with the ending, the writing breaks down. You get interested in a character only to have the character's role end; you become fascinated with a line of story only to have the scene shift to several years later. Later, however, the threads are picked up again, but from a different perspective.

That is an important aspect of the book -- nothing is lost forever, no matter how much the characters would prefer that to be true. These are real people and all are fleshed out, warts and all. There is no single character to love or to hate; instead each of them is so complex that you wonder what is "true" about them. You are left to make up your own mind about them. Indeed, much like people in real life, the more you know about them, the more complicated they become and the less you understand what at first appeared to be their motivations. The characters decieve each other, but they also decieve themselves and, in so doing, cause a world of hurt to those around them.

This is not an easy book, but it is a very worthwhile book. I look forward to the next volume with relish!

There are more than a few places in this novel where the author abruptly "comes up" with something that felt to me to come out of nowhere--the Chair, the ruins, the notion that a dead man is lost... I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but I don't like feeling as if I'm being told to keep closing my eyes while something new is created. The ending in particular felt "patched on", as if to increase demand for a sequel. I expected the book to end--and it didn't.

None of the characters were particularly likeable, and that didn't help either, although they were compelling.

I wouldn't seek out other books by this author--it wasn't bad, but it wasn't strong enough to make me really want to read more.

Desiring power, the king of fire, Cassilin of Malagash, conquers the Palindrakes, whose power belongs to the sea. Cassilin's archmage takes the Palindrake heir and forces the lad Valraven to swear allegiance to their god Madragore. Her husband dead and her son held hostage, the Lady of Palindrake knows it will take several lifetimes before they throw off the yoke of Madragore's denizens, but she vows the power of the sea will surface one day as an unending tidal wave sweeps away the taint of Cassilin.

Two centuries later, twins are born to the Palindrakes. The male is forced to adhere to his ancestor's vow of fealty to the followers of Madragore. However, the female Pharinet does not have an obligation to Madragore. She begins to learn the magical secrets of the Sisterhood of Dragons who serve Dragon Queen Foy. As the twins begin to return power to the sea dragons, the land turns to darkness even while freedom comes closer and closer for the people of Palindrake.

SEA DRAGON HEIR shows why Storm Constantine is one of the most acclaimed authors of epic fantasy novels. The story line is fast-paced and filled with action and magic even as the characters are fully developed. This realm feels genuine because the cast feels real even when magic is used and gods and dragons appear. With novels like the Wraeththu trilogy and this story, genre fans will want more works especially the sequels to this tale, from the talented Ms. Constantine who makes the unbelievable so believable.

Harriet Klausner

I was probably just starved for a good read, but I enjoyed reading this book! It needs a bit of an open mind, but the plot kept me interested, and the characters were actually real for a change. None of the usual "okay, she's pure, good and perfect, and she's really evil, bad and wicked" that I seem to trip over again and again. As much as we like having characters that fit in little boxes, it's not very real is it? Oh and yes, it is definitely not something for young ones, but I'm not that old either.

The only thing that kind of annoyed me about this book was the epilogue. Okay, since when do you introduce a new character in the last five pages? But other than that I don't regret picking up this book, it did what I expected it to, it entertained. I will definitely look for more Storm in the future.

If you like your neo-pagan gothic fantasy liberally sprinkled with feminism, incest, freewheeling sex, and Byzantine political plots, Storm Constantine's Sea Dragon Heir is your perfect ticket. Constantine has a marvelous power of description coupled with a wonderful sense of inventing complex characters. Her creative ability to generate an entire, multifaceted world out of whole cloth is nothing short of miraculous. However, for this specific reviewer, the story's dedication to a gothic worldview with its dark, tragic, and amoral atmosphere, ends up a distraction. Almost without exception, all the major characters are despicable, highly sexualized to the point of caricature and self-centered. A speech by one of the main characters is a summation of their motives: "None of us are divine or righteous. We are all motivated by small concerns ... All we can aspire to is ... greed." The end result is the reader will complete the epic to see how the plot unwinds, but end up caring little for the characters, as complex as they may be. One caveat, readers who are dragon lovers will be disappointed. The resident dragon stays mostly off stage.

I just finished the first book in the series and have to say it was less then I expected. The fetish with the so-called "erotica" was silly, incest to homosexuality to adultery, it has it all. I could deal with all of that and expected an over imagination surrounding sex from the author. However, I could not deal with the limited information about characters, such as Valraven, he is somewhat the center point of the book but so little information is given about him. Goes from smiling kid to having sex with his sister, to getting training as a soldier (wildly lacking any information there) to being the greatest military mind and warrior in history. All of that could be placed on a couple of pages. No detail of him at all, a great disappointment because he could have been a powerful character in the book, all I was left with was a guessing about him. I understand it is more about the feminine characters but even there it is lacking a great deal. Pharry is a complicated character but I get the feeling of reading about a paper character just no depth to her, no connection can be made by me with the characters in the book.

There is a great piece of work in there somewhere, the world and setting are wonderful the characters just are horribly lacking.

After reading the trilogy set, I can go back to this first book and safely say that Sea Dragon Heir is my least favorite of the three. I'm tired of being "told" what Valraven is rather being "shown." In fact a great many things are being told and hence the characters are barely flesh and bone and I didn't care about the melodramas going on in their lives. There are too many convenient plot devices that is contrived and tiresome. As for the bed-hopping scenes..... why? They don't seem to serve any other purpose other than to "oh lets be shocking, shocking(!)" and then left at that with no futher insights to the characters themselves. Once again it is the "telling" rather than the "showing" flaw of Constantine's writing that bores me to no end.

I will say that Constantine's writing style is lovely and rather poetic. Too bad she waste it trying to be the next Anne Rice or something.

I enjoyed this book but it wasn't compelling enough to make me read the rest of the trilogy. The story feels somewhat contrived, as if the protagonists are doing things the author requires them to do in order to reach a certain goal, rather than acting naturally as a result of how their characters have been developed. The dialogue is often stilted and the author uses it as a means of conveying information that she needs to get across, rather than representing what real people would actually say in a particular situation.

There isn't a lot of narrative tension -- we don't get much build up to major events in the novel, and as a result the story ends up feeling rather flat. And ultimately, not that much happens. Several major scenes are rushed or merely summarised, or they happen off stage. The prose style is a bit flat as well -- not particularly lyrical, and with occasional lapses into 20th century diction, which doesn't really suit the subject matter.

On the plus side, the setting is well-drawn, and the magical elements are interesting and original. But I don't think this book is entirely successful as a fantasy novel.

Set in a generic fantasy world vaguely reminiscent of medieval Western Europe, Sea Dragon Heir is a long book with painfully little to say. The first part of the book focuses on the self-indulgent, whiny Pharinet, whose greatest ambition is to sleep with her brother. It takes her, as I recall, 84 pages to get there. Pharinet rather abruptly becomes a secondary character in the second part, which focuses on Varencienne, ingenuous sister of the Imperial Prince Bayard. Throughout the book, there are moments of decadence which bring happy recollections of the Wraethhu books, and hints of fascinating political maneuvers -- the book ends with one of these, offering some hope. However, the book is much longer than it needs to be, with many scenes lacking action, drama or interest. We learn very little about the world in which the story is set, even though the natural environment, in the form of sea and fire, is vital to the plot. The writing has a mundane quality which compares badly to that of genre masters such as Tanith Lee. In short, throughout most of Sea Dragon Heir, your reviewer was bored.

In the Sea Dragon Heir I glanced through the book and was quickly seduced by the writing style of the author. The description and language used by Constatine was opulent, it filled every moment of the story and left an atmosphere as thick as a smoking room's interior.

It was to my great disappointment that I found on finishing the book... I really didn't like most of the characters. In fact, some of the ones I enjoyed at first became those I disliked the most. I read on, her wonderful writing style like the sweet nothings of a lover, as I was disappointed again and again by the actions of the characters.

There are books with no "heroes" that are interesting stories in their own right, in which the events themselves intrigue. Then there are stories to which you become apathetic to the drives and whims of the characters themselves, and unfortunately this book falls in that category.

I finished this series, hoping to see some wonderful resolution to the many events that begin in this book. There was none - if anything, purpose and meaning flop about like a fish out of water. However, I did find one constant throughout the course of the series. One message that Storm Constantine seemed to want to convey, and one that I didn't agree on.

"It is only those people who have been emotionally and psychologically scarred in a way that would leave modern people in an institution are strong enough to persevere and in the end become victorious." Now, that's summing it up in my own words, but it's pretty plain that's the author's point. And I just can't swallow that no matter how strong my suspension of disbelief.