- Title:
- Dragon Age: The Last Flight
- Author:
- Liane Merciel
- Release:
- December 27, 2017
- Format:
- Audiobook
- Narrator:
- Gildart Jackson
- Series:
- Dragon Age #5
The Last Flight scratched an itch I had for more Grey Warden content in the series. My introduction to Dragon Age was the DA: Origins, and I’ve been a fan of the Grey Wardens and their questionable methods since.
While it’s partially set in the Dragon Age, it’s primarily set in the … fifth age, I think. I can’t remember the name of it. The transitions between the two ages felt sloppy. Hardly anything going on in the Dragon Age was interesting, I never felt invested in the characters, or as if I even knew them as characters at all. I think those scenes could have been cut, or at least the majority of them, and the story wouldn’t have suffered in the least for it.
As for the scenes set during the fourth blight, I loved them. It was intriguing to see the story of the fourth blight outside of codex entries in the games or dialogue in passing. It humanized these characters of legend and slowed what a long-term fight against the blight and archdemon really looks like.
While I think some scenes would benefit from prior knowledge of the series, overall, it’s decently beginner friendly. The descriptions of Ash Wraiths were lacking. Had I not been watching some Dragon Age: Origins gameplay recently, I wouldn’t have even known which creature they were talking about, it sounded at first as if they were describing a Rage Demon.
Additional issues came up in the writing in general, though I only remember 1, for how stupid and out of place it was. One of the characters at some point mentions a “fairy godmother and her magic wand”. This is infuriatingly stupid. Thedas has fucking mages with staves. Why would they need stories of fairy godmothers with wands?!? If you’re going to write for a series with its own lore and history, then real-world mentions of things such as fairy godmothers should make sense in the context of the universe. Stupid things like this take you out of the moment and ruin the scene.
The narration was pretty good overall. I found it truly insufferable how the narrator pronounces the “wh” sound as “hhhhhhhwh”, and at least once he said “sawr” instead of saw. I truly loathe when narrators add letters to words or mispronounce them. It’s fucking distracting. One of the female characters sounded like a grizzled, 40-year smoker, and none of the others were the least bit noteworthy.
What I mean when I say the narration was pretty good, I mean the scene narrations were pretty good. The character voices were mostly abysmal. If a character didn’t have a gruff, deep voice, they were forgettable.