The Killing Song: The Dragon Below, Book 3 [Mass Market Paperback]

The Killing Song is the third book in the Dragon Below Series by Don Bassingthwaite. The end of the saga finds the group of companions an a mission to stop the Dragon Dahmir from completing his mission to create slave minions out of Kalashtar for the Master of Silence.

The story picks up after Dahmir has successfully procured the ancient binding stones and has gone to the floating tower city of Sharn along with his mad servant Vennet. Dahmir has been punished by the master of Silence who has taken away his ability to take form as a human, leaving him only his dragon form, and that of a bird. It is in Sharn that Dahmir expects to kidnap a number of Kalashtar and complete his mission for his master.

The companions have split up with Geth the changeling,Orshok the Orc druid, and Ekhaas the Hobgoblin mystic heading to the Shadow marches to warn the Gatekeepers of Shadowmarch. The wizard Singe, Dandra the Kalashtar, Natrac the Orc, and Ashi the dragonmarked Bonetree hunter travel to Sharn to try and stop Dahmir.

The story thus alternates between the two groups of companions as they each try to accomplish their missions.

Don Bassingthwaite is a talented author however his talent for description and metaphor is not enough to overcome the relatively confusing storyline. The actual plot is simple enough, with the character missions fairly straightforward, but there are so many evil characters and plot devices, and then again those plot devices are hard to understand. Understandably, character development can be a rarity in these novels as the focus is on the action, but it was notably absent here. The characters are one dimensional and repetitive. I got tired of reading Geth exclaim "Grandfather Rat" and Dandra with "Light of Il yannah" as though these statements alone are enough to establish individual personalities.

I also found it fairly annoying that one of the big mysteries of Geth's past is dangled throughout the series and then left unexplained in the end.

All in all, the book has a decent pacing, well described scenes and a fair amount of imagination, but in the end this imagination may have been a little too overwrought.

The Killing Song by Don Bassingthwaite is the third, and final, book in The Dragon Below trilogy set in the world of Ebberon. In this book Mr. Bassingthwaite starts up right where he left off with the previous book The Grieving Tree. He follows the familiar characters of Singe, Geth and the rest of the gang. If you are considering reading this book, you really do need to read the other two the first being The Binding Stone and the second, as mentioned above, being The Grieving Tree. Only then can you fully understand the entire story.

When I reviewed the previous two books, I noted some things that I thought would have made the books better. Such as more character development, bring the characters from the 2-D cutouts that they seemed to be, and develop sub-plots to add to the books overall feel. Each of these were addressed in this book, but only very little. This book was frustrating for me to read, because I saw great potential for a very good story, but the lack of depth in the characters and how their situation was portrayed greatly lessened the effect this book had on me. Instead of caring about the characters and the outcome of the story, I was left with more of an "I wonder how this ends" type of attitude.

The characters in this book, and trilogy, for that matter all have good potential to be good memorable characters. Especially with a name like Singe, yet there is such little character development that once you move on to another book you forget about them. One very frustrating part for me was at the end of the book when two characters are talking about an issue that has traversed all three books and it is left as a `mystery'. If you truly wanted character development, this would have been a great opportunity to add something. Yet, when I look back on the book, the characters remain mere 2-Dimensional cut outs of other characters I have read about in the past. There is very little in the way of `newness' for the characters in this book.

The plot of this book is the culmination of the trilogy so I expected some big things. There is no longer another book to wait for, this is it. For the first two thirds of the book, I found myself wondering how this could possibly end, as I didn't see any type of resolutions occurring. So, once I got to the last third I felt very rushed as it seemed the author realized he had to finish the book, and trilogy. Now, don't take that the wrong way, there were pieces of the ending that made sense and fit the story very well. I just wish I didn't have to read about it at warp speed and feel like I missed something. I think this also plays into the idea that the characters were so forgettable that I didn't really feel like I had much vested interest in the outcome. That is another thing that frustrated me. The entire plot idea, of the song, of the Master of Silence etc is a very good idea. I just think the execution was not done as well as it could have been. There were also a couple times during this book that the characters would say something and it felt like the author was telling me, as the reader, "Hey, hey, this is important don't miss this." Personally, I don't like being `slapped' into remembering something. It's the author's job to get me to remember it, but making it interesting not just telling me.

Overall, I can't rate this book as anything other than average. Throughout this trilogy I was hoping things would progress and grow. Yet, I was disappointed to see that they remained the status quo and didn't veer far from what he had done before. Fans of Eberron should probably read this book to learn about the Master of Shadows and the Killing Song and a couple other tid bits of information, but casual fans may want to steer clear of this until you know for sure you want to invest some time and energy into the Eberron world.

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  3.0 out of 5 stars