Hello, everyone! Today I’m doing something different. I don’t usually write up reviews/discussions of an entire series, much less give my random thoughts before I finish one. However, A Chorus of Dragons has me in a choke-hold, and I just need to talk about it. So, here we are. I recently finished the third book of the series (out of five), and I am seriously tempted to throw my TBR out the window and move on to book four. I’m trying to be good, though, and decided that bombarding you all with my thoughts would be enough of a distraction to keep me on task… hopefully.

Where do I start? Hmmm. I’ve realized that I love super complex stories with multiple layers, detailed world-building, weird timelines that jump all over, and lots of strange mysteries with reveals that make my jaw drop. This series has all of those things with a side of polyamory. lol. So, of course I have to love it. I was SO CONFUSED whenever I started the The Ruin of Kings. The characters were commenting asides to each other while narrating a story from multiple perspectives and different starting points. I had no idea what was going on for a while, but the characters and world were so interesting I didn’t want to stop reading. I was honestly dumbfounded at how well the different perspectives meshed up by the end and needed to know what happened next.

So, I quickly dove into The Name of All Things. I was almost immediately disappointed. lol. The characters from the first book were largely sidelined in this one, and the story seemed to go backward to events that happened before and simultaneously alongside those of the first book. I guess that shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise given how wonky the storytelling timeline was in the first book. The book’s focus on the horse people/kingdom and it’s repetitive explanation of their gender roles just did not work for me and really got on my nerves. The end of the book was interesting and finally moved the story forward, but it wasn’t enough to make this book a great reading experience for me. I considered DNFing the series and didn’t pick up the third book until a year later.

The Memory of Souls changed everything. It delved deeper into the history of the world, its gods, and all the main characters. I want to talk about all the crazy shit that went down, but so much of it would be spoilers. All of the main characters got important roles in this one, and it moved the story forward in some massive ways. The complexity of the plot and of the relationships between the characters was wild. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the ramifications of the past lives and the many layers of interconnections between the characters. It almost feels incestuous to a certain degree because of the complex history between them all. The ridiculous amount of revelations and the mind-blowing ending left my head spinning. That is how you use an epilogue. Seriously. This book even made me look back on the second one in a fonder light. lol. Now I’m curious to see what I’d think of it on a re-read with the knowledge I know now. I think I’d enjoy it more.

In general, this series has the potential to become one of my all-time favorites if the author manages to stick the landing. I haven’t really seen many posts about it in the book community. So, I felt the need to shout about it for a bit. 🙂 Thank you for reading my rambling. If you’re sleeping on this series, definitely give it a shot. I’m glad I did and that I didn’t give up on it.