To The Last Page

It's immediately apparent that while The Waking Fire  might rest on some familiar fantasy tropes, not least of which is the fire-breathing dragon on the cover. Anthony Ryan nonetheless clearly wants to depict a much more rich and varied fantasy world than the one we are more accustomed to seeing, and a rapidly changing world too, which is perhaps ultimately the direction that the Draconis Memoria series is aiming towards. There is certainly plenty of imagination and variety applied to The Waking Fire  then and great progress made over the course of nearly 600 pages of this first volume, but perhaps not enough originality here or deviation from the established fantasy template. The world of the Draconis Memoria series is a dark, steampunk style universe. At least that's the initial impression, but things move along rapidly here and inventions come quick and fast. Rather than steam being the force that metaphorically oils the wheels and drives the engines of this society it's...