Dragon War

The Draconic Prophecies #3

by James Wyatt

An epic series that fans of the Eberron (R) world will love.

The Five Nations of Khorvaire stand on the brink of war. Gaven--exile, outlaw, and prophesied Storm Dragon--may be the one person able to stop it. But he can't remember who he is. Wounded, tormented, and hovering on the brink of madness, Gaven's friends--and even a few enemies--have to save him before it's too late.

The Eberron world's first hardcover trilogy, James Wyatt's The Draconic Prophecies introduced readers to new lands and new cultures and brought about political changes to the hit setting. It tells the story of a once-proud hero fallen to disgrace and madness, who must learn to wield extraordinary powers to save those he loves, and to keep the world from sliding back into decades of warfare.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Dungeons and Dragons

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 2009

About the author

James Wyatt is an award-winning game designer at Wizards of the Coast, and now holds the position of Design Manager for Dungeons & Dragons. He was one of the lead designers for D&D 4th Edition and one of the original designers of the Eberron Campaign Setting, and has written and co-authored dozens of game supplements. He grew up in Ithaca, New York, and now lives in Washington State with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Yavor Vlaskov · Rating 1 out of 5]

It has been a really long time since I have seen such a drop in quality between series entries. This one peaked in the second book and dropped the ball so hard in the third that I can't. I marked this as having "spoilers" but how can you spoil something rotten? Anyway, just to be precise about some things I absolutely detested - 97% in we had one of the half-assed antagonists go "I am your twin brother". This perfectly presents the entire damn book. Weird, over-the-top (even for the genre) plot developments completely shoehorned in. The character development is extremely poor - at best it rethreads the exact same ground it did in the last book, at worst it actually devolves. The time spent on plotholes that go nowhere would have been better spent working on the intercharacter relationships (something the author isn't good at in any case),but it was passable and compensated for in the second book, here it is front and center and that makes it even worse when it is not even half-assed, it's quarter assed at best. Three quartered ass?). Cart had a weird subplot with the quori just because Wyatt wanted to shoehorn every lore in, had him repeat the same speech twice rephrased about freedom from his makers, falling somehow even flatter the second time, Gaven has a weird singing Jesus vibe fighting against the unravelling of the very world at one point (why not try and make it extra "epic", Wyatt probably thought), it's all... bad. Just bad. I regret reading the series now.

[Filly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book

Preferred the 1st and 2nd in the series, this seemed a bit forced to bring the threads together. Especially those regarding the origins of the conspiracy to enact the prophecy.

Aunn and carts arcs though were the best.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average at best as it just didn't captivate me. Felt like it was ticking the required boxes.

[Blind_guardian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid conclusion to the trilogy, even though it took me months to find ish the last couple chapters.

[Joel Flank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure what to say about this book that my previous reviews of this series didn't say. It wraps things up about Gavin and his allies (It's hard to call them his friends, since most of the time they're separated, and while they treat Gavin as a friend, he doesn't really seem to have a relationship with them asides from being rescued)

There's still lots of introspection about what being part of a prophecy is about, and lots of forcing 4th edition D&D concepts into the 3rd edition world established in Eberron, changing it's character and tone dramatically.

Also, while this is a world shaking event, pretty much any non-main character is depicted as a wuss. As written, the entire force of kingdoms is unable to exert itself against the main characters, despite theoretically having lots of other powerful people in the world - they pretty much exist only to have overwhelming amounts of cannon fodder for the main characters to kill without thought or run from.

Now that this series has converted the Eberron world into a pale imitation of what it was before, I won't be reading any published books set there after this series. Way to ruin another cool campaign Wizards of the Coast.

[VirusHunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The epic adventures of Gaven and his friends wraps up in the chaos of an oncoming war and schemes of conspiracy.

The only problems I had was that the end feels rushed as well as the introduction of characters who have been relevant to the plot since at least book 2 but feel like they're just hanging in the background waiving "hi!" as they subtly walk behind the stage.

Above all it's a great end to a series of books that have been with me since high school, I'm only sad that I'll never see Gaven again.

[Morvram]

Alright end to the series. I feel that it could have been a bit better at the very end, although that was still a nice ending, but overall the book has a nice feel to it just like the others and it reads very well for me.

[David Given Schwarm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this entire series. A very good introduction to Eberron and a fun read. Strongly recommended if you love D&D Fiction.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved the book, it was nice to see how The prophecy turned out

[Shannon Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ending and some engaging characters but the end is rushed and story a bit disjointed with new characters added late in the book ad old characters dying off stage.