Book: “Knight of the Silver Circle” by Duncan M. Hamilton
Publishing Info: Tor Books, November 2019
Where Did I Get this Book: NetGalley
Book Description: Three dragons wreak havoc throughout Mirabay–eating livestock, killing humans, and burning entire villages to ash. It was nearly impossible to kill one, using a legendary sword and the magic of the mysterious Cup; to tackle three, Guillot dal Villerauvais will need help.
The mage Solène fears having to kill again; she leaves Gill to gain greater control over her magic.
The Prince Bishop still wants Gill dead, but more than that, he wants the Cup, and he’ll do whatever he has to to get it, even sending his own daughter–a talented thief and assassin–into the dragons’ path.
As secrets mount on secrets and betrayals on betrayals, both Guillot and Solène face critical decisions that will settle not only their own fate but that of all Mirabaya.
Previously Reviewed: “Dragonslayer”
Review: While I didn’t absolutely love the first book in this series, I could still appreciate what it was trying to do and the type of approachable, sword and magic fantasy story it was telling. The characters, while fairly predictable, were also well-drawn and familiar enough that I was definitely not set against continuing with the series. On a whim, I requested this one a while back. It took a while to get to it, but here we are! Overall, while it’s still not my favorite fantasy series ever, I did like this one better than “Dragonslayer.”
After returning with a dragon’s head, Gill has re-established himself as a dragonslayer of note. Parting ways with Solene, the two are set to go about their lives again, not expecting to see one another again. But it soon becomes apparent that dragons aren’t done with them let. Three new ones begin pestering the countryside, drawing Gill out once again and now against worse odds than ever. For her part, Solene fears what is coming and is still working on gaining full control of her powers. But there may not be time as the Prince Bishop continues to make his own moves.
So, overall, this was very similar to the first book. It’s your tried and true classic fantasy story where the heroes are heroic, the mages struggle with their magic, and the bad guy does ad things. But in a lot of ways I think it also improved on the first book. For one thing, part of what I liked about the first book was the inclusion of POV chapters from the dragon’s perspective. Here we get more of that, which I still think is pretty unique, but we also dive more into dragon culture. We learn the variety of dragons out there, how some are just rampaging beasts essentially, but how others are quite intellectual and have a sort of society amongst themselves. I definitely continued to be interested in this angle of the story.
As far as Gill goes, I still think that he’s a bit of a cookie-cutter hero in that he’s almost exactly what you’d expect. In my review of the first book, I struggled with the lack of exploration into his emotional arc dealing with the loss of his family. But I was glad to see here that his struggles with alcoholism weren’t simply swept under the rug after the first book. Yes, he had success again as a dragonslayer and is largely coming into his own again as an esteemed fighter. But we still see him struggle with his past and the part of him that has dwelled in booze for so long.
I also liked that we got more from the villain of the story, the Prince Bishop. In the first book, he, too, was fairly one dimensional. Here, we see more from him and learn more about his own motives and how far he is willing to go against our heroes. It gave him enough depth to make him more of an interesting character to follow in his own right.
The writing is also still solid and Hamilton is clearly an adept storyteller. However, the series continues to feel a bit one note. And, like I said in my first review, it still seems as if it’s not bringing much new to the genre as a whole. There’s definitely an appeal and an audience for this type of book, but I also like fantasy stories that surprise me in some way or another. A good example would be Michael J. Sullivan’s “Age of Myth” series. That, too, is a fairly typical fantasy adventure story with elves, dwarves, humans, and dragons. But the story also takes several surprising turns, focusing in on characters you originally cast as side-characters and doing away with some whom you thought would be around for the long haul and occupying important roles in the story. But, all of that said, fans of classic fantasy will still likely enjoy this second entry from Hamilton.
Rating 7: Improves on the first novel, but still a bit bland to really hit home for me.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Knight of the Silver Circle” isn’t on any other Goodreads lists other than November 2019 Book Releases.
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