Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliot
December 31st 2006 06:34
Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliot
Prince of Dogs is the second novel of Crown of Stars series. At the end of King's Dragon, the Eika have taken over Gent and Bloodheart, the Eika chief has turned into Sanglant into a dog and keep him as a war trophy. Also, King Henri has quelled the rebellion from his sister and is now the ruler of Wendar and Varre. Prince of Dogs is about recapturing Gent from the Eika and driving them away.
Most of the time is spent of making and breaking alliances in this novel and the batt;e with the Eika is supposed to be the climax except that when it comes it's more of a whimper than a bang. All the main characters like Alain and Liath are running around in circles. Sanglant who is living his life as a dog and hence the title has nothing much to do but wait for his deliverance though he does get some real good passages. The fictional universe that Elliot has created which looked so intricate and awe-inspiring in the first volume looks tedious in this volume. Without an exciting plot line to drive it, it functions as a filler in seven-volume series.
If, according to Graves, original matriarchal religions have been interrupted by patriarichies and taken over by them, then one reason for these fantasies is to restore the lost matriarchies their lost glory. So, the Church here is based on "Our Lady" and males and females have equal right to throne and participate equally in armies. That's fine. It is when Elliot begins to desrcibe "concubines" and they turn out to be males, you begin to wince and when Democritus is turned into Democrita, St. Augustine iinto Augustina, John of the gospel into Johanna, you begin to realise it is the other way round; it is matriarchies which are beginning to rupture patriarichal traditions and making them their own, at least in the fantasy world.
After reading King's Dragon, I felt like immediately reaching out to the next volume and read it. After reading Prince of Dogs, I wanted to stop reading the serie altogether.
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