 | The Dragon’s Path is a high fantasy adventure with different races including insect-like creatures, tusked orc-like beings, fur-covered people, and humans, among others. The various races were created by dragons who disappeared from the world thousands of years ago, but left behind smooth roads and other structures formed from “dragon jade.” There are, predictably, slang terms for the different races, but they live together harmoniously for the most part. Although the other races participate in the story (a tusked Yemmu saves a starving wanderer in the opening), the main point-of-view characters are humans (and one half-human); humans are called Firstbloods because they were the first race created by the dragons. |
The story is told primarily from the perspective of four distinct characters:
- Captain Marcus Wester, a world-weary former war hero who now leads a mercenary band with the help of his second-in-command, a “tall-eared Tralgu” named Yardem.
- Sir Geder Pallaiko, a bookish nobleman who is the butt of every joke among his fellow lords. Geder comes from an impoverished minor house.
- Cithrin, a teenage orphan apprenticed to a bank. Cithrin is half-human and half-Cinnae, a tall, slender elven-type race.
- Dawson Kalliam, a powerful and wealthy noble who schemes to forcefully strengthen the king against his enemies. His wife Clara uses gentler methods to achieve her political ends.
In the novel’s opening chapters, Cithrin and Marcus flee the city of Vanai ahead of an invading army that includes Geder; meanwhile Dawson is trying to throw the war in his favor.
 | The mule cart Cithrin drives (inexpertly) has the bank’s entire treasure hidden under bolts of wool. She joins a caravan being protected by Marcus and his new recruits—who are actually a traveling acting troupe. It doesn’t take Marcus and his company long to recognize that Cithrin has no experience driving a cart, though her actual secret takes longer to discover. |
Geder is tasked with tracking down the cart of missing bank loot Cithrin smuggled out of town, though otherwise his storyline is separate from Marcus and Cithrin’s.
The author deftly shuffles this shell game of different characters and their many secrets: a boy who is actually a girl (Cithrin), a wool cart full of jewels and gold, caravan guards who are really actors, the nobleman (Geder) in the midst of battle who has no idea how to fight, and the scheming lord (Dawson) who endangers his family.
The author deftly shuffles this shell game of different characters and their many secrets: a boy who is actually a girl (Cithrin), a wool cart full of jewels and gold, caravan guards who are really actors, the nobleman (Geder) in the midst of battle who has no idea how to fight, and the scheming lord (Dawson) who endangers his family.
 | The caravan with Cithrin, Marcus, and the actor-guards arrives too late to get through the snowed-in mountain pass, so they decide to break off from the main caravan and go to a southern city. The war in Vanai is affecting trade everywhere, and the longer it takes them to reach their destination, the more likely the fortune Cithrin is smuggling will be discovered. Cithrin begins the story overwhelmed and unsure, but gains confidence using her banking knowledge to find a way out of their predicament in the southern city. Her plan is audacious and risky, but ultimately successful—until a bank auditor arrives looking for the missing cargo. |
Marcus is easy to like. He’s a reluctant hero, but despite his resistance, he takes his job to protect his clients very seriously and comes to care deeply for Cithrin. During the climax, when all seems lost, it is Marcus who provokes Cithrin to find a solution to outwit the auditor.
 | Geder is a unique fantasy character: a frumpy would-be scholar forever failing at everything that defines his fellow lords—worse, he knows he’s a pawn in their political games. When he’s set up to fail as governor of Vanai, he chooses a horrific solution no one anticipates—including this reader. At home he is embraced as a hero by Dawson and his allies, becoming a different sort of political pawn. Although their praise is everything he’s always longed for, Gender ultimately decides to leave and search for a mythical temple in the far east. There he forms an alliance with a god-priest who can tell the truth from lies. The god-priest is the embodiment of a Spider Goddess who has been biding her time to return to the world. |
At the very end of the novel, when a character learns Geder and the god-priest have established a temple to the Spider Goddess in the heart of the kingdom, his reaction to this news forms the closing lines of the book: “in his mind there was a single thought: It’s begun.”
The Dragon’s Path is exceptionally well written, with interesting characters and compelling stakes that kept me turning pages to find out what would happen next. It's a masterclass in how to write compelling characters and braid multiple plotlines. The story has a satisfying ending, though the Spider Goddess’s arrival does set up stakes for the next book in the series.
The Dragon’s Path is exceptionally well written, with interesting characters and compelling stakes that kept me turning pages to find out what would happen next. It's a masterclass in how to write compelling characters and braid multiple plotlines. The story has a satisfying ending, though the Spider Goddess’s arrival does set up stakes for the next book in the series.
Also by Daniel Abraham: Age of Ash
Another excellent, gritty novel about politics and war: Memories of Ice
Another excellent, gritty novel about politics and war: Memories of Ice
