The Empire of Ashes (The Draconis Memoria #3)

It was an excellent read. I loved the hook the Wold building and the characters. It was well done. I would highly recommend it to anyone. The ending was sloppy and not well crafted for as good as the story was through out the all the books. Seem the author became either tired or bored. I wanted a better parting between the main Characters. What kept this book from being a truly great read. 1 – I didn’t like that there where no true villain. Someone to really hate. Yes , the White was cast in this role but he was hard to hate, not easily understood . Silver pin and Cathleen where minor Characters in the big picture. Both where well written characters and pushed the story forward. They fell fall short of being a true Villain. 2 – way to many characters to keep up with. Less is more in some instances. This is one of them. 3 – Over the top action scenes. Write what the reader wants . If the reader skips over pages of the book , which I did , then they are not necessary to the story. A good editor could have cut down have the time devoted to the continuous fighting , page after bloody page. It wasn’t needed to further the story. This was an excellent set of books and I can’t complain much about how the Author got his story out. It was told with passion, guile and respect for for the readers and for the characters that was created in the storyline. Highly recommend this series.

The first book in the series started off very slow, but once it had me, it had me. I went through the second book very fast, and attempted to slow down while reading this. I enjoyed the world building, and most of the POV characters were very interesting. I did find myself somewhat bored at the story of Hillemore at times. I had been pulling for Jack and Lutharon, so that was a bit of a bummer, but everyone else seemed to have their happily ever after. I couldn’t help but wonder about the sheer amount of corpses. Drake corpses, spoiled corpses, human corpses. I just feel like this land would’ve been covered with the dead by the end. Solid read all in all, I would recommend it if you like a bit of steam punk with your dragons.

I would say this was a satisfying conclusion to the Draconis Memoria series. I think my actual rating would be more of a 3.5 stars but I am going to round up. The biggest pro for me about this series is how after book one the series and story found a solid and stable footing. The first book was definitely a hard book for me to get into and some of the POVs that we had were not all that interesting to be quite honest. With that being said, The Empire of Ashes was so so good from beginning to end. Lizanne, Clay, and the POV from the antagonists point of view were spectacular. Lizanne will always be my favorite, she was such a badass and she knew it. Clay progressively got more enjoyable with each installment. The antagonists POV was great from the get go, it added this edge that the story needed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Then we come to Hilemore, I wish he was left out. I never once got invested in his story unless he was integrated in with one of the other POVs. You can tell he was there for the action and really nothing more. Now as much as I enjoyed the magic system we had in this series. I wanted more from it. The magic system uses blood from the different drakes and only the Blood-blessed can use it. You got Green, Black, Blue, etc. We spent a lot of the time using the blue to advance the world building and progress the story that the other aspects of this magic system kind of fell to the wayside a little bit. But I still really enjoyed it, don\’t get me wrong, I just wanted more. I do agree with some other fellow reviewers when they say that this series will be overshadowed by what is undoubtedly one of the best debut novels ever (I\’m looking at you Blood Song). But I want to say try and clear your mind because this series and that series are on two completely different sides of the scale. I definitely find faults in both, neither are perfect, but each are unique in there own retrospect.

While the previous book took forever on the details, this one moved things along. The last half felt rushed. But after the very… slow… pace from the previous book I welcomed the change. Without spoiling anything, I enjoyed this last book in the series and what happened with its main characters felt satisfying. A few questions remain, but I am content to let them go. Any more company talk and I was going to scream. Sometimes felt like I would look up from the book to find my boss talking to me in a droning superior voice adding dragons in the conversation just to keep my attention. Overall, great end to the series.

What a wonderful wrap up to a fantastic story. This book, I believe, was everything one could ask for in a finale. Storylines were wrapped up while hinting at future storylines. All the characters had major parts to play and none were denied their time in the spotlight. Characters were very interesting and very relatable. I enjoyed the magic system here of being dragons blood, makes for interesting times when trying to acquire some. The vast world is richly written, while always being believable. Plenty of action in this book, whether you enjoy ground battles, air or by sea. Looking forward to more stories in this world.

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