Review: The Last Guardian by Michael R. Miller

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while, but had so much on my plate at the time that it got a little buried.

So, I’m glad that I could finally read to the end of this story.

This review is based on a review copy that I received from the author. 🙂

As winter wanes, the fragile bonds of the Three Races begin to break. 

With Darnuir recovering from his addiction, and Blaine reclusive in the hallways of his Order, it falls to Lira to manage the mounting tension between the humans and zealous dragons before catastrophe strikes from within the city walls. 

In Brevia, King Arkus unveils his new weapons to the Assembly of Lords, but is it a gift to his people or a threat? Cassandra fears it the latter and vows to curb her father’s new unchecked power that she herself helped to create. 

And beneath the burned mountain of Kar’drun, Dukoona suffers at the hands of his Master. His one hope now lies in the crippled spectre Sonrid, who is forcing his broken body back to the mountain in order to play his part, or die, and be free from his pained existence. 

Darnuir awakes weakened, and to an alliance on the brink. He must at last become the leader the dragons need but will he be too late to save his people, not just from Rectar, but from years of their own mistakes?

Let the world have something worth remembering me by that isn’t holding a sword.

Since this is the third book in a series, I’ll try my best to avoid major spoilers.

This is (mostly) the continuing story of Darnuir, the King of the Dragons (who are human shaped, for actual reasons). At this point, Darnuir is suffering from a pretty severe addiction to Cascade magic, which the titular Dragon’s Blade gives him access to. Tensions have mounted considerably in the dragon’s city, where a number of human soldiers are camped with the dragons. With Darnuir out for the count, and Blaine, the Guardian and religious leader of the dragons, doing absolutely nothing to stop his zealous followers from riling up the humans, it’s up to Lira to try and keep the peace.

Suffice to say that relations between the dragons and the humans are not great, and on the eve of a war with Rectar and his army of demons, that’s really not great. When Darnuir wakes up, he’s got to try and maintain the alliance between their two races… which is going to be difficult, but dragons do tend to like a challenge.

I have to say that this was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. I did find it a little difficult to get into it right at the beginning, but that’s mostly because I didn’t entirely remember who everyone was and why they were important. I made it there pretty quickly though, and everything started coming right back, but a recap wouldn’t have gone amiss (recaps never, ever go amiss for me, as I read so many books in the same genre, lol).

I really, really like who Darnuir has become over the course of this series. He’s grown as a character as the series has gone on, but in this volume we see the culmination of that growth and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed at all. Blaine was another character that I felt really grew (as far as a bagillion year old dragon can grow) over the series.

I also really liked Lira, the dragon Praetorian Guard, Raymond, the human Chevalier, and Grigayne, the human Islander heir. I found myself most interested in the POV chapters in which they appeared, and those chapters were always a good read.

There were all kinds of things that happened in this one that I truly wasn’t expecting. It poked me right in the feels a couple of times too, which is always good (even when they’re the feel bad feels, lol). The last quarter or so had me on the edge of my seat a lot, which was nice. And the ending brought everything to a close. I even got to see a character I wasn’t expecting to see again right before it finished up!

This was a well written and engaging conclusion to the Dragon’s Blade series. I’m interested to see what Michael Miller is going to come out with next! I had a definite 4/5 stars of fun with this book.

Goodreads
Amazon (Also, an omnibus ^_^).

Thanks again to the author for the review copy! 🙂