The Sunset Sovereign: A Dragon's Memoir - Laura Huie - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Laura Huie

NARRATOR: Ethan Fifield

GENRE: High Fantasy Novella

PUBLICATION DATE: September 25, 2023

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: The story of a dragon and his connection with the people who want him dead. Unlike what the tagline suggests, the writing approach is more like a descriptive biography with flashbacks than like a memoir. Character-oriented, with only two complex main characters. Thought-provoking plot. High fantasy but will work even for non-fantasy readers. A nice read, as long as you don't expect a "memoir".

Plot Preview:

The dragon Vakandi has watched the people of Vakfored for centuries, seeing them grow from refugees to self-sufficient citizens with an affinity for magic. The people have long forgotten how they first came to settle in the place they call Vakfored. But the dragon remembers. So when an assassin named Sisal comes to kill the “threat”, Vakandi convinces her to listen to his life story.

The story comes to us in the alternating third-person perspectives of Sisal and Vakfored.

I find dragon stories quite interesting, but this book further stoked my curiosity by its tagline: “A dragon’s memoir.” This created certain expectations in my head, which might have affected my actual experience of the book. If you can forget the word “memoir” and read this as a general high-fantasy featuring a dragon and a female assassin, you will enjoy the book better.

Vakandi is as magnificent as you would expect a dragon to be. I love the nuances of his character. Instead of depicting him as the typical dragon we see in most fantasies, the book assigns him a greater role. There are so many things I want to say about this. However, given that this is just a novella at 150+ pages, I can’t go deeper into the characterisation for fear of spoilers. So I’ll just say, I loved this angle as it wasn’t something I had anticipated. The writing did complete justice to all the aspects of this portrayal.

Sisal is a formidable adversary. A lone female assassin against a giant dragon – fascinating! I like how she held her wits against the “beast” she had come to slay, and how her mind was constantly swirling with potential attack ideas even as she listened to his “memoir”. I wish her age had been specified (I hope I didn’t miss any reference to it in the audio version.) I’d have liked to know if she was a mature youngster or an older warrior looking for one last glorious victory, but I simply couldn’t guess how old she was. Regardless, I loved seeing her be an open-minded warrior and a good listener ready to give Vakandi’s version of events a fair chance instead of blindly adhering to what she had been told throughout her life. Many humans need to learn from her in this era of political brainwashing and media manipulation.

Vakandi and Sisal are the only two prominent characters in this narrative, but through their interactions and Vakandi’s flashbacks, some other citizens of Vakfored get a role to play in the story. But given the constraints of the structure, their character development is very limited. A pity, because I would have loved to know a couple of them better, especially given what an eclectic crowd they were and how they were able to harness magic. (I would also have loved to know more about their magic, but as Vakandi was the focus of the story, perhaps such inclusions wouldn’t have been feasible.)

The world-building is somewhat limited for a high fantasy, but given the writing approach, this is to be expected. The focus is character-oriented, with the two main characters getting alternate chapters in limited third-person. As such, we get glimpses of the world they are a part of, but it is never the dominant feature of the plot. Vakfored, though an intriguing place, serves more as a background for Vakandi’s life-story than as its primary location.

Vakandi’s experiences with Vakfored lead to several interesting themes. (All of these would lead to spoilers, so I cannot expound on them in detail.) I didn’t expect to find thought-provoking dilemmas in a dragon’s story. It demonstrates the importance of listening to both sides before reaching any conclusion, and of not believing hearsay (or adult-say or media-say.)

The content isn't all serious; there are a few light-hearted scenes as Vakandi has a tendency to make quips when talking to the defensive Sisal.

Given the tagline, I thought the story would be written in Vakandi’s first-person perspective. So I was surprised to see the whole book in third person, and that too, with the narration being split between Vakandi and Sisal. Vakandi is actually narrating his life story to Sisal in his chapters, but these flashback anecdotes are also written in third-person. Further, it isn't his entire life story, but more like a recollection of his few experiences with the Vakforedians. So the overall feel isn't that of a memoir but like a story-within-a-story. I am a stickler for writing structures – if I am promised a memoir, I need the book to be written as a memoir, with first-person life experiences. But not all readers would be as fussy as I am, so this might not be a major hindrance for a majority of readers.

The ending left me with slightly mixed feelings. It isn’t bad for the story, but it also isn’t what I had hoped it would be and feels a bit rushed. The abrupt cut-off doesn’t help. Given the relatively brief length of the novella, it might perhaps have been better to add a few pages more and offer proper closure. Not necessarily a happy one; just a smoother one.

A shoutout to that magnificent cover art. Human artists rock! 

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at a little more than 5 hours, is narrated by Ethan Fifield, who does a decent job. I enjoyed his voicing of Vakandi; he made the dragon sound almost like a grand British royal gentleman, which actually suited Vakandi perfectly! But his voicing of Sisal was not particularly memorable to me. For some reason, I kept drifting off during the Sisal chapters though I didn’t lose my focus during the Vakandi chapters – no idea why! Still, the audio version is a good way of enjoying this book, except for those listeners who might get muddled up with the story-within-a-story format.

Overall, I did like the two main characters and the essence of the plot. However, as I had anticipated a memoir, the third-person writing and the dual perspectives caught me by surprise. I wish I could adjust to the difference in tone better. If you can ignore the memoir part and read this book more like the biographical experiences of a dragon, then it ought to click better.

Recommended to fantasy readers looking for an unusual dragon novella.

My thanks to author Laura Huie for providing me with a complimentary audio copy of “The Sunset Sovereign: A Dragon's Memoir”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

The digital version of this book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited.