The Dragon's Blade Trilogy

A Complete Epic Fantasy Series

By: Michael R. Miller

Narrated by: Dave Cruse

Length: 45 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

An Amazon Overall Top 100 best-selling title! Includes all three books in the Dragon's Blade Trilogy.

Arrogant. Scornful. Full of pride. Darnuir, prince of dragons, cares nothing for the damage he's doing to the faltering alliance against the Shadow. He thinks himself invincible - right up till a mortal wound forces him to undergo a dangerous rebirthing spell, leaving him a helpless babe in human hands.

Twenty years pass, and demonic forces are poised to sweep across the land. With the alliance between humanity, dragons, and fairies fracturing, Darnuir will have to uncover the secrets of his past, seek redemption for his sins, and rally the disparate races if they are to survive. 

Only Darnuir can do this. For, he's the last member of the royal bloodline, and only he can wield the Dragon's Blade. 

His second chance is the world's last hope. 

Over 100,000 copies sold worldwide of this fast-paced epic fantasy series, perfect for fans of Phillip C. Quaintrell, Salvatore, Feist, and Brandon Sanderson.

©2018 Michael Miller (P)2019 Michael Miller

Tall tale of the first Order

Great story, great characters, and hard to put down. The trifecta of storytelling... I highly recommend this trilogy, but, only if you like dragons, magic, and a good fight for the triumph of good over evil.

Fantastic performance of a good group of books.

I came to this book because I'm a fan of Dave Cruse. He does such a good job of performing a book and not just reading it. Each character has a unique voice which is needed in a book with so many characters and complex stores. The books are entertaining, imaginative and have a lot of original ideas in a traditional fantasy world.

Potential, but missed

In my mind, you have two distinct forms of fantasy in reading. You have the fantasy that is about the world, with magic systems, caste systems, social systems, ect. These are well fleshed out and have hard rules to their uses. Many times the story can be about breaking these rules, and the struggle involved in such, but they are there and they are fixed. The other type of fantasy is a much faster and character focused fantasy. Magic is there, the world is there, but it is all a backdrop to the story of the characters.

The Dragon's Blade trilogy suffers because it is the first sort, while trying to be the second sort. This is, at it's heart, a story about the world in which we find ourselves. A story about light and shadow, about the history of the world and the weight it holds, without telling us enough about it. The world is not fleshed out, is not described, and is not explored. Magic is fleeting and just seemingly there. Consequences come from its use and abuse, but are usually nothing more than a bad taste in the mouth (figuratively and literally in this case.)

The characters have motivations, but seemingly come to realizations and changes in attitudes out of the blue. The reader should see why these changes happen, instead of being told that they do. We should know the motivations, understand their aims, and it should be logical. Many times we just see our POV overcoming adversity through plucky tenacity and a little bit of Deus Ex Machina towards the end. Characters that could have fleshed out the story more were separated, killed off, or otherwise sidelined, and I felt not real connection to any of them.

The concept of rebirth and nature versus nurture was interesting, but ultimately fast forwarded through, when the growing up of Darnuir could have been a book in and of itself. The villains (up until the very end villain, which was foreshadowed since the prologue) are all two dimensional and evil for evils sake.

The ending is open ended, allowing for future growth if the author desires to. however in the afterword he states that he does not foresee that occurring. I would say the ending is TOO open. Too many questions are left unresolved. Too many threads are still hanging, and too many people have no resolution.

I used one audible credit for three books, and they were entertaining at times. I would say this was a good value and have rated this 3 stars accordingly. Had I used three credits for three books I would have been sorely disappointed.

Dragons...a new perspective

Great story and narration! Do not pay attention to critical readers complaining about narration and strength of story. An enjoyable listen.

Couldn’t put it down

I listened to the entire trilogy over a three dayperiod. Every moment that I was awake. I fell in love with the characters. I fell in love with the narrator and I hated that it came to an end! Highly recommend!

An Epic, Grand Story

I received a free review copy.

An evil, shadow god wants to conquer the world, all worlds in fact. The gods have distributed powerful swords to help the dragons fight the shadow. Will the dragons be able to overcome the shadow with the aid of fairies and humans? Will the races learn to get past their differences and work together? This is the stage for this epic story.

Overall, I enjoyed listening to these books. I cared about the characters. The way magic is dealt with is interesting as it is inherently dangerous to its practitioners. There is some romance, and it features amazing battles.

I liked how the books deal with moral issues including racism, how people can be led astray by their faith, selfishness vs self-sacrifice, and how we are influenced by our experiences. In general, I thought it dealt with those topics well. The characters are not perfect. They make mistakes and compromises, they may be prejudiced, and they may have suffered wrong at the hands of others. You will have to read the book to find out whether they seek peace and forgiveness or bitterness and hate.

Weak, I love the genre, but cannot take this

Weak character development, weak plot, weak narration. I can listen to about anything as a diversion but I ended up replaying countless parts as there was little to hold interest. The narration is awful and does not help the characters, but there was little to help. It’s not worth the credit, even for so many hours. I’m exchanging it after reaching the end of the first ‘book’.

Gave it a shot. Really enjoyed it

The series was great. I thoroughly loved the world building. And the Narrator was really good I could listen to him read the phone book. Looking forward to more from the author and narrator

One of the best fantasy trilogies I’ve ever read.

Brilliantly written and performed!
Characters are well defined but also develop and grow throughout the story. Magic is well limited so that no one individual is all powerful and yet there is incredibly powerful magic wielded at the same time. The cascade magical energy source is ingenious.

Started pretty good then went COMPLETELY to crap!

I generally don't write reviews or and generally only rate the books that I like or really don't. This one falls into the later category. The initial premise is what drew me to this book along with the reviews for this book. But it COMPLETELY does not deserve the 4.5 rating that it has so far. NOT EVEN CLOSE. Now that I've spent almost 46 hours listening to this I deeply regret wasting the time. The ending is flat and goes NO wear and the author even states at the end that his readers mailed him saying the book seem unfinished and wanted a 4th book to properly end the series. They were half right. The ending REALLY sucks but I wouldn't waste my time with another book in this series. On a positive note I will say the narrators performance is good. And the authors writing still kept my interest enough to find out where this was going, but the story itself is crappy and goes no where.

enjoyed

Narrator fantastic, made the read even better. I enjoyed being read to each evening. Helped chill me out.

Straight-down-the-middle Fantasy, well-narrated.

A real marathon for the narrator, who brings dignity, warmth and gravitas to the performance, and pulls off some great character acting. The narration in between is competent and well-engineered, though doesn't quite have the naturalness or animation of the dialogue. While this is to be expected in general of 3rd person narration, and particularly given the sheer length of this project, it can have a 'lulling' effect at times.

The story is a certain dose of High Fantasy, if that's what you're looking for; dragons, in particular. For fans of things like 'The Dragon Prince' series on Netflix. The general concept is engaging, though some of this promise is lost in the execution, including some grammatical and word choice issues. There are many moments of good characterisation, though character arcs at the 'macro' level could be more believable and therefore compelling.

Very enjoyable.

Narrated very well.
Easy to listen too, With a interesting story.
I recommend this book.

great concept

loved the trilogy very easy listening and narrator done an excellent job with all the characters

Dreadful

Tedious storyline, no depth, uninteresting characters. Scene descriptions poor. Waste of time, choose something else!

10/10

Really loved this. A brilliant, well thought out story. Would love to see this brought to life on TV.

Amazing trilogy

I loved this story. The ending is perfect. I started reading these books but finished via audio book

Wonderful

This trilogy is amazing. An epic journey in a fully fleshed out magical world. I’m gutted it’s over. The conflict between characters and races always justified by complex personalities that took me on an emotional journey. I’m hoping for an adaptation to get to see the world on screen.

An excellent story, with some novel concepts.

I really enjoyed the story, but the narration was awful in my opinion.

Unfortunately, the American narrator has not the ability to pronounce a large number of the words and phrases that are not in American modern English. He has pronounces row (as in argument) as roe for example. It is very archaic English at best and some of the voices he attaches the characters are very irritating, bordering on puerile.

I would avoid any book read by him in the future. Give me Michael Kramer anytime.

A great trilogy

I love this book, love how the characters develop and the ending couldn't have been better. The narrator does a wonderful job and it is a pleasure to listen to him.