Dragon Age: The Calling - Good book, bad trope

 

Well, we’ve made it (gender-neutral) girls. We’re onto the second book of the Dragon Age trilogy I’ve had since I was probably about eighteen or nineteen. This next one is Dragon Age: The Calling, and since it’s a trilogy, shockingly, it’s also by David Gaider.

Our best friend, the blurb, says that after two hundred years of exile, King Maric has allowed the legendary Grey Wardens to finally return to Ferelden. But they bring with them dire news: one of their own has escaped into the Deep Roads and aligned himself with their ancient enemy, the monstrous darkspawn. The Grey Wardens need Maric’s help and he reluctantly agrees to lead them into the passages he travelled through many years before, chasing after a deadly secret that threatens to destroy not only the Grey Wardens but also the kingdom above.

The book opens on best friend Duncan, who’s sat waiting for an audience with King Maric with this mage diva, Fiona. Duncan is going to go ahead and actually be one of the Grey Wardens of the blurb fame, and it then gets mentioned that the Grey Warden who made it down to the Deep Roads with the old darkspawn knows the location of an Old God, and this is an issue, because if the darkspawn figured out he knew that information, they could get it, and then a Blight would begin – a darkspawn invasion. This book also comes fourteen years after the first, Rowan is just dead… There was just one line in the first chapter about how she died, and everything changed. Like, sick, I guess. But overall, I appreciated that this book felt like it had more of a solid plot to follow than the first book, like I felt more invested in this one than the first. Like, we had a plan that we were going to follow, rather than just wandering.

This second book definitely wasn’t as bad with the adverbs as the first one was. They were still there, but I wasn’t noticing them as often. However, there was one particularly egregious one that I was like, “Why even put that there?” because it made the whole sentence read weird. It fully said, “Each time the dwarf danced agilely out of the way.” And my whole issue with adverbs, as I’ve written more, is that so often they just don’t need to be there, because in this case, the verb of “danced” gets the message across. If they danced out of the way, the fact they’re dancing to avoid something suggests a sense of agility, so there’s no need for the “agilely”.

The books did also pop over through different people’s POVs, including Bregan, the bestie who had been taken by the darkspawn. How I feel about this is very much the same as I did with the first one – how I think it worked well. A very basic assessment to make, but it was interesting getting to see the main characters on their journey after Bregan, and then also getting to see what Bregen is going through while they’re trying to get to him and him being completely unaware that they’re on their way.

Whenever there’s a hint of any kind of romance, this book, and honestly the first, definitely wasn’t subtle about it. And one of the things that bothered me was how it was the same every time. It was always that a male character would look at a female character and suddenly notice how attractive she was, and then we’d suddenly be told which of her physical features were attractive. This might just be because I read a lot of romance books – and yes, I will be reading one next – but I don’t think I’ve ever read a book, or series of books, where the romance was so… unromantic. Because it wasn’t romance, it was more just lust, every single time. Like, yes, Maric was telling us that he was in love with Katriel in the first book, and then allegedly had feelings for Fiona in this one – which I certainly didn’t believe – but there was no feeling behind either of those relationships. There is one relationship that felt like it had feeling in it that I’ll mention a little later.

I quite liked Duncan as a protagonist. I don’t remember when it was that his age was told to us, but I believe he was eighteen. And with that, he was inexperienced, immature, and while he was Grey Warden, he had only been for six months, I think. He was still at that point in his life where he’d still take everything personal to the point where he literally ran away during the book, while the group was travelling underground. He was probably my favourite character out of the main group. And mind you, I considered the main group to be him, Maric, Fiona, Kell, Genevieve and Utha. Julien and Nicholas were also there.

So one thing I almost celebrated was that this book did in fact have gays in it. They weren’t present enough for me to class the book as queer, but they were certainly there – Nicholas and Julien. I’ll just say this straight up, the two of them, for as little as they were on the page, they had the most compelling relationship I had read in the two books of the trilogy I’d read to the point of me writing this. Now, I do have to criticise the bury your gays of it all. So, there’s a fight scene with a whole ass dragon in the first half of this book, and out of the entire group of characters that are travelling with Maric, who is the only one who actually dies in this fight? It’s Julien. Mind you, the hound, Hafter, and the hunter, Kell, end up on the brink of death, but Julien is the only one to die. And I mean this as no shade, but the dog could have died too. That’s a horrible thing to say, but you don’t even find out that Julien and Nicholas are lovers until this demon sends all of the besties into a dream – the Fade – and you see Nicholas’ dream where he has Julien back. And guess another thing? Who makes it out of the Fade? All the straighties, but Nicholas chooses to stay. Don’t get me wrong, you did see that Nicholas was utterly destroyed when Julien died, so it did make sense that he would choose to stay in the Fade. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t piss me off that both of the queer characters in the group were killed off while all the straight people got to live. It just annoyed me that this series finally shows queer characters but then it’s like, “Actually, they’re going to die, and then you can have a second half-baked romance between Maric and an elf.” Like, don’t piss me off. I’ll be so annoyed if David Gaider went three for three on books where Maric has a fling with an elf.

Now I don’t want to scare anyone with what I’m about to say, but this book had a complete beginning, middle, and end. This book was definitely stronger than the first in the trilogy overall. Like I mentioned before, this one actually has a more concrete plot than its prequel, and it does follow through on it all the way to the end of the book, which I very much appreciated, especially after the first book and its super crusty epilogue. This one did have an epilogue, but it was one that fully fit into the story – it was literally just a few pages of what happened with the besties who survived going underground (word to my divas, f5ve). Maric had another child, with Fiona. And throughout these two books it just seems like Maric’s type in women is just elven. But neither he nor Fiona really want, or can, raise the child, so Duncan takes it. Wild. Anyway, onto the final book of the trilogy.

Okay, bye!