like, someone will say something, and then

sometimes no more than a page later, the exact same information will be relayed a different way

with no acknowledgement of the first way we learned this info

really good book, but some proofreader messed up

Lackey's Joust?

yeah

I loved the first one, but I felt like all the others decreased in quality, moreso the farther along they were.

Too many characters vaguely in focus. I saw Oset-Re's traits suddenly all become Gan's...

But yeah, redundancy.

I did love a bit in the last book, just the idea of the god of difficult choices.

But there was that bit about dragons ignoring scorpions for being so tiny, when the first or second book had them eating them greedily...

I loved Ari's moment in the first book. "I will NOT MAKE WAR ON CHILDREN" and the anguish of that, and Vetch struggling with how to feel.

But I feel like that moment was never equaled.

god i love that moment

and yeah, i really do love the books, even the later ones were pretty good i feel

but i keep on getting caught up by the 'wait, didn't we already learn this a different way? wtf'

Heh, yeah...

I remember thinking about making a journal for Ari to put him in ES, years back.

oooh

he could have called himself Kashet XD

I would have jockeyed for Kashet to show up and argued that it was totally workable. |D

Yes, exactly.

lolol

Kashet as like a pet, since dog-level intelligence and no fire breath, etc.

i would have been amused if he'd goen around to the different dragons in ES, and been like 'this one isn't right'

XD I think he'd have stalked observed them a lot.

probably XD

and yeah, she almost goes out of her way to really remind us that no, these dragons are no smarter than a really smart dog

and they don't have mindspeech

I think once or twice she even has characters say they're not sure the dragons can even equal really smart dogs.

which i actually appreciate, it's interesting having a different take on 'bonded' animals than the easy out of mindspeech

Though there's the one character who does have animal speech, we don't see her POV.

i think she had a character decide that the tala made them stupider

/nods

so Kashet was way smarter than the other dragons

and yeah, but that's differetn

Even him, though...

animal mindspeech is not a case of a whole breed of animals being able to talk, it's a case of one human being able to talk to every

creature

Yep. And get them to understand what's wanted of them in training.

aha, well, Kashet at least clearly understands more than the simple commands he's been taught

You know who I wanted to see more of? That greek-analogue guy from Joust, who was a slave and introducing new dragon training methods.

hard to say how much anger and tala get in the way of the other dragons learning things

oh man, yeah

he was pretty awesome

Capturing them younger, not breaking them, conditioning them.

I'd have liked to see if tala going impotent would still mean they stuck around.

I think a later book mentioned in passing that he ended up with an egg and dragonet, but... really I feel like later books did a lot more

summarizing of events than showing them. That scene was, at least.

unfortunately, i think she got unfocused once she got away from one person (Vetch/Kyron) and suddenly had like 9 or 10 people who were 'main

characters'

it would have worked better if she hadn't tried to have so many people to focus on

Yes, seriously.

I had a sheet of notebook paper that I used to put down all the human names and signature colors, dragon names and colors, and the very few

character traits ascribed to each, and she started mixing those up within a couple books.

oh wow

i was not that organized

I mentioned earlier, Oset-Re and Gan.

i just.. kind of went with it, and i could follow along well enough as long as i was immersed in the story

When introduced they're both nobles. Gan is higher-ranked and languid-insolent.

Oset-Re is not so high ranked but incredibly beautiful, knows it, likes attracting people, especially women.

In later books Gan has Oset-Re's limited character, and everyone knows this and laughs at his vanity.

huh

i'll have to watch for that

I wrote them all down because I thought I noticed inconsistencies, and I wanted to make sure.

...I'm one of those people, yeah. |D

lol

You should've seen me earlier checking when a dragon learned to fly in a different series. "This page says he learned at thirty! This one

he learned at twenty-five! IT'S THE SAME BOOK aaargh series continuity error!"

lmao, what book is this

(seriously, two hundred pages later and the answer had changed)

Elizabeth Kerner's The Lesser Kindred.

huh, never heard of it

I actually do like the trilogy, and afaik that's the only serious instance of continuity fail, but I'm trying to write an app.

lol

just go with the later answer

it's only 5 years anyway

Iiii'm going with "in his twenties". He's a thousand twelve, I can be vague about exact numbers.

if you want to be more exact, you could say 'late twenties'

/nods

I had a plurk earlier about figuring out if he'd have a belly button. |D Secretly I love being detail-oriented.

oh yeah, i remember that XD

Because he might still have the turn-dirt-into-gold gradual contact power. It's important! (no it's not)