Four word summary: Better than I expected!So while my wife, Millie, was in labour with our daughter, I read four books (it took a while). It's been a bit trickier to find time to get those four books reviewed since then (we also have a hyper toddler). I doubt many people will read Aerie without having first read the preceding three books in the trilogy. I jumped straight in here because Millie was still reading book three, Sanctuary, so she'd bought this with her, and I needed something/anything...

Dreadful. It took over two hundred pages for a conflict to appear and once it had, it struck up out of nowhere. It had no connection to the previous books and made no sense. It was more like she tossed it in for the sake of a conflict, to render the fourth book significant when she could have ended it earlier. There was no build up for it and no hint of it in other books, either.In addition, the introduction of Peri felt forced, especially since she had no character development. She appeared lik...

Notes:I wish the fight part was set up better and described more. It was very interesting! I didn't care for the relationship conflicts as much because it was laid out and talked about too much in a manner that did not add to the plot.

After promising myself I wouldn’t continue with this series, I did. I have regrets.

I think the polite thing to say would be this series hasn't aged well, though I need some serious convincing that it was ever good. Generally poor and often repetitive writing with crappy yet seemingly acceptable gender politics. Were women ever mentioned without us being told how limited they are? I don't remember an instance.Edit:Oh shit! I thought this was at least 40 years older than it is. I didn't think someone who has Internet access and owns a refrigerator could seriously write this.

Really disappointing. It's only halfway through the book that anything related to the actual plot presents itself - and look, I know what I'm signing up for with a Mercedes Lackey book, and the occasional plotless meandering is par for the course, but here it was painful to get through. The dragons were a set piece, and I was hoping for some exploration and interesting discoveries in Aerie, but no luck there. Instead, there's nonsensical relationship drama, and Aket-ten's stripped of all positiv...

For the end to an entire series, it was a disappointment, but I did enjoy the characters & the book, so it's still okay. *shrug* I've just seen the author write so much better novels than this one, by comparison, it's pretty dull. I was 80% through it, still waiting for the plotline to develop, and then all the action took place in the last 30 pages! I think I might have been better off just stopping at book #3 of 4 & making up my own ending!

Full review here:https://jamesgenrebooks.blogspot.com/...Meandering and scattershot plot, but some of the larger discussions within make up for it.

Not the first time I've read this series but it's always a great read!

ReedIII Quick Review: While this continues the story from the first three novels it does not end the story well. This weakest of the four novels is only recommended for people interested in the continued story of the characters.

Kiron has assisted with the union of Tia and Alta, yet things are not as simple as they seem. Despite the Great King and Queen uniting the lands, without a common enemy the common people are divided. While on patrol, Kiron spots a lone rider from the border town – unfortunately dead. Have the Magi returned?Half the time Kiron acts very teenager-y and the rest of the time a bit childish! He spends a lot of time second-guessing himself and being grumpy. I’m not certain how many years have passed s...

I pretty much went from loving Aket-ten (in books #1-3) to hating her in this book. She seems so mad for no apparent reason.The dragons have moved to Aerie. It's hard to tell how much time has passed between book #3 and this book, but apparently they now have at least 64 dragons.There's a little confusion in the story at some points -- if all of Kiron's wing now has a wing of their own, then Kiron doesn't really have a wing anymore because they're part of the new wings.Is Letis in this book just...

I was really sad to read this book.I honestly think that it would have been better as a stand alone, rather than the final book of a series.It took ages to get to the point, and felt as if it had nothing to do with the previous plotlines. It was okay once it eventually got going, but I spent the first third of the book wondering what it had to do with the other books - apart from the main characters, and the dragons themselves.It was as if someone had complained about there only being male joust...

Normally, I'm a huge fan of Mercedes Lackey and I'm absolutely obsessed with dragons. This series was okay, not my favorite but the third one ended in a way that made me curious as to how this one would go. First of all, the book could have been at least a third the size it was because it was so repetitive. Not even necessarily in the feeding dragons, finding water, and that sort of stuff that the first three were. In the course of three pages, Lackey would reiterate the same thing in as many wa...

Hmm. Pretty good. A little under-developed in all the key aspects. I fully expected Peri to end up being Nebt or something. I guessed that she would be the “expendable mortal” instead of the the Chosen of Seft. Would have given her existence a reason...turns out all she was there for was to add length to the story and then be nothing... Kaleth turning into the Chosen was weird.And the unprecedented conflict between Aket-ten and Kiron was...just that - unprecedented, and a little ridiculous.But,

Aerie is easily the weakest of the Dragon Jousters quartet, although it is still a good read. Books 1-3 have a full, overarching plot across them that feels fairly complete at the end of Sanctuary even if there are some loose ends. Aerie is almost an extended epilogue, written to answer the question of "What comes next?" If it had limited itself to answering that question and not incorporating the petty relationship drama between Kiron and Aket-Ten, I think I would have liked it much better. Add...

The fourth in the series, this book is best read after the first three, but I think there's enough context without.This book shows the slow makings of building a combined nation, then segues into an ancient external threat. The hand of the author comes down and fixes the problem, and stuff wraps up. It's a decent series wrap up book with it's own interesting ups and downs. I enjoyed the reading, but feel it's not as strong as the others.

This is very possibly the best book of the series. The plot of the previous three books were like the lazy river at a water park, but the current of this one quickened a bit, with subplots filling the empty space and making it that much more interesting. With its low scale romantic rivalries, large scale nagging mothers, dark mysteries, drunk pigeons, gigantic foreign armies, and manifestations of the gods themselves, this felt more like ye olde fantasy adventure.

I don’t think this series is Lackey’s best work. The character development is flat, there is nothing really at stake during the action, and the romance falls back on pretty tired tropes about women in a man’s world. That being said, this series was totally fine for a beach read. Nothing too challenging or stressful, easy to pick up and put down.

This book, along with the previous 3 was OK, the author tries but sadly for me just doesn’t quite get there.... maybe more a set of books that are aimed at the ‘young adult’ market, they were not sophisticated enough for me. And this 4th book climaxed and ended very abruptly. If you want a great set of Dragon books read the books by Robin Hobb which are rich, detailed, emotive and amazing.

I was very disappointed with the conclusion. It felt rushed and incomplete. For some odd reason, there was an extra character out of no-where with random love interests that just felt unnecessary. The conflict was simply meh and didn't arrive until the last 50 pages or so. It just wasn't what I had expected after reading the other books.

The first three books of this series were quite enjoyable and I think it would have been better if the author finished it after the third. This book felt very rushed and did not make sense. The ending left the reader confused and unsatisfied. :(

While I enjoyed the story, and especially found the addition of the Chosen of Seft to be worthy, I found the end lacking. The Nameless Ones are only ever tangentially mentioned throughout the series, so the reader is left without an understanding of the depth of the final confrontation.

Another great addition to the series. The ending is a little more sudden, with less end of the story wrap up than I would prefer, but I still enjoyed the story. As with the rest of the series, I have read this before and I will definitely read it again in the future.

I hope I’m not the only one who is annoyed by the non-existent love triangle. Also, the entirety of the long-lost mother subplot could be removed and the storytelling would be greatly improved for it. Overall, not a bad read, but not the best way to end a series either.

Other reviews say nothing happens until the end. There is no major action, but stuff does happen. I like it. The end action was over a little too quickly, but the book was definitely enjoyable. For the ending of a 4 book series, I do like more HEA and an epilogue.

I like the books Mercedes lackey writes, she is good at creating a believable world and people to populate it. This series starts off very strong though I do feel that it falls off a bit as it progresses. It is truly readable and enjoyable.

Derivative and disappointing Borrowed Egyptian gods et al, only slightly disguised “clingfire” and pale copies of Pern dragons could not lift this book above the level of formulaic pot boiler.Lackey writes well and often plots well, but I could wish she knew her limits.

I thought this series ended with the third book, but I guess not...unfortunately, it really should have. I feel as if I missed something, because the Heyskins came out of nowhere. Apparently they're terrifying, even before people realized they were using blood magic (were all of them? Is the whole country a bunch of dark mages? I can't imagine how that works, since they'd need sacrifices, and then the common folk would be afraid of them, which isn't conducive to putting an army together...). Thi...

If ever there was proof that sometimes a story or series DOESN'T need to be longer, this book is it. SANCTUARY was such a great wrap up for the series, that AERIE just felt... well forced and generally superfluous. Some of the details and moments were enjoyable, but overall it annoyed me.Take Aket-ten and Peri and the out of left field forced almost a love triangle. At one point, Kiron wonders what happened to the Aket-ten of the previous books, and frankly I agree. She had been somewhat headstr...