A Dance in the Dust by Scott Palmer

Blurb:

The critically acclaimed next installment to the Award-Winning epic fantasy series, the Last Ballad. By Amazon Bestselling author, Scott Palmer.

1700 years before the events of A Memory of Song, dragons ruled the skies.


Life Will End For All

Captain Dravien Tarbet of the Lovasi army has spent most of his life fighting the people of Esher on their own soil, only to have all attempts at victory snuffed out by the Draku King, Kassius Esterbraun, and his dragons.

Finally, after seven years on foreign soil, Dravien has returned home, though now he is heartbroken and more alone than ever. But when the Esheri army turns the table and crosses the Old Sea, with their dragons in tow, to make an invasion of their own upon the country of Lovas, Dravien is sent into the field to meet them in battle. There, he is badly injured and left to die. When he awakes, he finds himself in the enemy's camp, under the care of a strange cult of Draku witches who call themselves the Ul Vosh Aris.

After being nursed back to health in strange, and unusual ways, Dravien is shown a life of peace and meaning that he never thought possible. But when the true reason that this cult of Draku has kept him alive is revealed, Dravien Tarbet is forced to make a decision between fighting for what he has always known, and fighting for what he has come to believe in.

With Sunrise Comes Fire

With Sunfall Comes Ash

Review:

Spoiler filled review

“Viv il lemura li. Life will end for all.”

A Dance in the Dust itches a lore-hungry craving, filling in historic gaps in The Remembered Lands with eldritch magics and dragon induced metal melting madness. Palmer remains at the pinnacle of his writing and storytelling. When I first read A Memory of Song, I thoroughly enjoyed my first foray into Ardura and The Remembered Lands. And then I read The Sound of Starfall and my mind was blown, and THEN I read A Chorus of War and I knew this was a series I was going to be thinking about for the rest of my life. A Dance in the Dust only confirms to me that Palmer knows what he’s doing. He’s created a world, rich in history and steeped in mythical monsters, that has a story to tell. 

“This is what it means to be great. You must wander into the unknown—into the darkness with nothing but a small candlelight and hope you find your way to the end of it.”

A Dance in the Dust is set 1300 years before the events of the main series, starting with A Memory of Song. While A Memory of Song takes place in Ardura, A Dance in the Dust takes place in the sister continent of Edura, where the old Yehvenki and Lovasi people lived before invading and taking over Ardura. The Draku—a dragon people created by the insane Warlock Insa Rolin with the Words of Karaat—have lived on the coast of Ardura in the land of Esher for centuries but have been continually harried by the warriors and Warlocks of Yehven, led by the High Archon. In an attempt to finish the war, once and for all, Kassius Esterbraun assembles his Draku armies and sails for Edura to bring the fight to the Lovasi population. Dragon fire scorches and melts away the Lovasi armies as the Draku make landfall and begin their conquest. 

A Dance in the Dust is a single POV story, told through the eyes of Captain Dravien Tarbet of the Lovasi army who has fought through soma hazed vision for the Empire throughout his life, fighting to avenge the death of his love, Eshara. She met a fiery fate in Sareen, and he had been led to believe that the Draku had murdered her while razing the city. However, during one of the initial battles between the Lovasi army and the Draku, Dravien is snatched into the air by one of the Draku dragons and dropped from the air. In a fulfillment of prophecy, Dravien is not killed and is captured by the Draku. Over time, he comes to believe that he is the fulfillment of an ancient Draku prophecy, naming him as the Imperial Son. He learns the ways of the Draku, training with the Dragon Knights, and eventually discovering the truth about the Empire: that they’ve kept him mentally disabled and inebriated with the highly addictive drug called soma, that they have trained him to be a captive to their desires, and that they ultimately ordered the burning of Sareen that caused the death of Eshara, not the Draku. His life as he knew it was a lie. He rises to the challenge, becomes the man of the prophecy, and fights against the Empire.

“Anger is like sand to a fire. Anger will extinguish you. Let your anger burn away in the flames you conjure inside. Fight with love in your heart, fuel your fire with it, and you will find yourself flickering in the wind like the hottest flame, burning any who dare come near.”

A Dance in the Dust adds a wonderful amount of depth to the Draku people, who we were initially introduced to in A Chorus of War (technically, they’re mentioned in The Sound of Starfall, but the first time we really get to know anything about the Draku is A Chorus of War). The Draku, and Julien Esterbraun in particular, were some of my favorite parts of A Chorus of War, so I loved having a whole book dedicated to their history and this decisive war against the High Archon and the Lovasi. 

Palmer doesn’t hold any punches with A Dance in the Dust. This is no fairy tale with a happy ending. Just because Dravien finds himself doesn’t mean the Draku emerge as the clear victors in this battle. And from the main series, we know the Lovasi have taken over Esher by the events of A Memory of Song. Dravien’s life ends with a sliver of hope that he has wounded the High Archon—who we learn is Adeqor!!!—and that, in making him bleed, he has shown the people of Lovas that he is not an immortal God but just a man. He has hope that the Ailaryan Order will fracture as a result of this revelation and that the Lovasi Empire will be weaker to protect the Draku in the future. Beloved characters die. The bleak world that Palmer created remains grim and gritty. While the High Archon is injured and does bleed, he does it after slaughtering three of the four dragons that we meet, one of which was a dragon of prophecy, destined to bring about the end of the world. But the High Archon laughs as he brings Illkura crashing to the ground, the Splitter of Skies no longer. The power of the High Archon is terrifying, and Palmer does a phenomenal job demonstrating the hopeless situation of the Draku people in their fight against the Lovasi army and the Yehvenki Warlocks.

“I think the greatest thing a person can do is to know themselves. Even if victory is uncertain, the journey to break your chains and find who you are is one worth taking.”

A Dance in the Dust is everything I have loved about The Last Ballad and more. The Last Ballad has the makings of a grimdark series that can and should be held up with series like The First Law and A Song of Ice and Fire. Its deep worldbuilding allows the reader to immerse themselves in the Remembered lands, get lost in the eerie, haunted forests of Ardura and Edura, and fall trap to the eldritch magics of Warlocks and soothsayers. The dragons have been unveiled, Ermegal remains alive, and the world has yet to burn. But with Palmer guiding this tour, there’s guaranteed to be a bloody, fiery pyre waiting for those who venture into the Remembered Lands.

“Let us be dragons today. Make this fight beautiful and die with honour. It has been one of my life’s greatest pleasures to treach each of you the dance. Now, show me what it was all for. Let the world sing forever of the day the Dragon Knights died.”