I haven't played a Dragon Age game in years, so I read Dragon Age: Stolen Throne

 

Now I don’t want to scare anyone with what I’m about to say… This book that I’m talking about today is not only part of a trilogy (I think), but it’s fantasy, and it’s not queer. I know, don’t throw tomatoes at me just yet. But I’m talking about Dragon Age Stolen Throne by David Gaider today which, I could not tell you when I got it, but I know I’ve owned this, and the two other David Gaider Dragon Age books for over a decade, and I’ve never read them. I know that I originally bought them after playing Dragon Age: Origins all the way back on my old Xbox 360 at the same sort of time I got some books based on the Fable games.

The blurb says when his mother, the beloved Rebel Queen, is betrayed and brutally murdered before his eyes, young Maric becomes the leader of a rebel army, fighting for the freedom of his cruelly repressed nation. In a land controlled by fear, and struggling to command a formidable army, Maric’s only allies are the outlaw Loghain and Rowan, the beautiful warrior maiden promised to him since birth. Surrounded by spies and traitors, Maric must find a way to not only survive but achieve Ferelden’s freedom and the return of his line to the stolen throne.

So, immediate thoughts before I began reading: If my memory served, and without me looking this up, Loghain ends up being somewhat of an antagonist in Dragon Age: Origins, and you have the option to kill him in that game. I’m sure that’s a thing. Like, he declares the playable character are their group of allies as a threat to the nation. I could be wrong in saying that, but I feel like it’s a thing – I remember him being somewhat of a villain. And then outside of just Loghain as a concept, I absolute hated the bit on the blurb where Rowan was promised to Maric from birth. Disgusting concept to me. I understand that in the context of the book, and Dragon Age, it is giving fantasy, and very medieval vibes. There’s no modern technology or ideology, so I suppose crap like this would be a thing. But that did not change the fact that I hate it. Like, they really said this woman may have no autonomy.

The book opens with bestie Maric’s mother being murdered and him running. Like, diva, sprinting from the men who murdered his mum, the queen, and ends up murdering one of them back – slay. POV switches to Loghain where Maric runs out into a clearing where Loghain and his friend are. Loghain ends up taking Maric back to his settlement that ends up getting attacked when everyone learns Maric is in fact the prince – the two then run away at the order of Loghain’s father. They end up running into Rowan at some point, who we must queen out with her as she brings the boys to this army which forms a foundation of the book.

I don’t know if it’s all fantasy from this era, but this book loved an adverb. The number of times, just in the first chapter alone someone would have a basic action added onto with an adverb. It really had me thinking that, Queen, if you’re using that many adverbs, just pick different descriptors, don’t just tack an adverb on. Don’t have someone eye someone suspiciously. You can just have them eye someone. I think it’s okay to trust your readers to pick up on it.

Now I haven’t read any recent major fantasy, however I did pick up a fantasy book recently, so I don’t know if this is something that has changed in the scope of fantasy as a genre, but there were times in this book where there was just so much exposition. Now I don’t mean world building like settings and people and things like that. I mean, there was a section where our besties Maric, Loghain, and Rowan basically took three years to grow in an army, and there was just a section where we were told things they did that made them grow closer and the whole time I was full Manila Luzon like, “Okay, werk”. Like it just happened. And because there was so much exposition in this section, towards the end of it, there’s the makings of romance between two of them, but because they’d not properly had time to actually vibe together, I found myself not particularly caring. Had it happened later in the book, then maybe I would have. I do think this comes because I tend to read more character-driven books than I do fantasy.

I did quite enjoy the book tottering through various POVs mid-chapter. I know a lot of books do this, but the bit I liked about it in this one is that, yes, we had Maric, Rowan, and Loghain getting spotlights, but we also had Meghren, who was the king that the rebels were trying to overthrow. And I liked being able to see what everyone was up to. I know that’s a painfully basic point to make, but it was the case of while Maric et al were in the trenches – both literally and figuratively – you could see how Meghren was dealing with all the news he was receiving as he just sat up in his castle and basically just yelled at people. There’s an elf character, Katriel, who didn’t particularly have one allegiance throughout the book, and you saw her playing every side that was competing. I was a big fan seeing her, and knowing what she was doing, as she bounced between everyone while they were all totally unaware of what she was doing.

I’m just going to say it: the homoeroticism between Maric and Loghain. I’m not sorry about it. Their relationship was homoerotic, and you can’t sway me any other way. Something about the army set up, the two of them being haters to friends. I haven’t yet, but I feel like I could go onto Archive of our Own and find some MaricXLoghain fanfiction. And after that last sentence, I did go and check, and I was right – there were 73 works under their tag, so it wasn’t just me that thought of that, despite this book coming out in 2009. I don’t care that they were blindingly heterosexual, those men wanted to explore each other’s bodies! I don’t care that there was an epilogue with a random time jump that said that Rowan died as queen and that Loghain went off and married an unnamed woman. Maric and Loghain explored each other’s bodies.

I think ultimately that this book struggled with the issue that some trilogies, or books that the tale spans over several books. And that is that for me, personally – and I want to stress the personally part – it’s just difficult for me to feel satisfied at the end of one of the books. It’s just the inherent issue of the fact that the story isn’t over at the end of the first or second book. Now don’t get me wrong, there definitely were plot lines in this book, there was a whole romantic arc that Maric went on with this elf diva, Katriel, that starts and ends in this book, but because of everything else that happened in this book, that, as much as I appreciated it – because it definitely had potential – it just never hit me as hard as I wanted it to. I say this all because I’m writing this having read 400 pages over like two weeks, tens of thousands of words, and the story isn’t even over yet. I get that the book features a whole revolution, and overthrowing of a monarchy, but then this first book ended, like I mentioned above, with an epilogue in the future where Maric and Rowan are king and queen and have a child, and the nanny that’s taking care of said child tells them about everything that happened. That they clearly all live at the end of the story. So there’s part of me that’s thinking, well what’s the point then? I could understand it more if it was just the child and there wasn’t specific mention of all three characters living. Because even if the book had done that, that wouldn’t have spoiled that they all lived and lived happily ever after.

Still, it was a book. The best way I can describe my overall thoughts are with that one clip of Miss Fame from season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race where she’s not understanding the, “How’s your head?” joke. And when RuPaul asks her how her head is, her response is just “…fine.” That’s how I felt about this book. It was …fine. I will read the whole trilogy since I’ve had them for years, but I’m going to spread them between other books.

Okay, bye.