The Ballad of Sir Benfro
I’ll level with you straight up, if you’re not a fan of dragons then you really might want to give this series a miss, it’s fairly dragon heavy. If you like your dragons to be weapons of mass destruction, you also might want to give it a miss. Personally I like my dragons to be highly intelligent, or cunning, or both, after all I grew up reading Tolkien and Le Guin. I like them to be remote, and disdainful of us poor humans, who basically just aren’t as socially evolved as they are. The Ballad of Sir Benfro manages to tick a few of these boxes.
On the edge of memory a pair of warring dragon brothers, each a powerful mage, wrought a terrible harm on the whole of Gwlad. In the aftermath of their final battle a terrible curse was placed on all the dragons of Gwlad, their size, numbers, and powers have dwindled greatly, the once majestic creatures have been reduced to a flightless shadow of their forbears. In the centuries since the curse began humans have assumed dominance, and the dragons of Gwlad have been all but eradicated by the monastic warriors of the High Order of Ffrydd, a task currently carried out enthusiastically and with extreme prejudice by the insidious Inquisitor Melyn.
In the face of this continuing hostility the dragons have retreated meekly into small hidden villages in the forest of Ffrydd. Meanwhile the King’s health is ailing fast, the uneasy truce with neighbouring Llanwenog is hanging by a thread. Nobody expects it to last, indeed the High Order of Ffrydd are eagerly awaiting its end and the chance to crush their Northern Neighbours once and for all.
A prophecy by a rambling madman suggests that the damage caused by the ancient dragon wars could one day be undone. The signals that this long awaited reckoning may be on its way, arrive in the forms of Benfro, the first male dragon to be hatched in over a thousand years, and Errol, a human child surgically delivered by a dragon healer unable to prevent the death of his mother. These events are just the start of a very long path.
The Ballad of Sir Benfro has all the ingredients for an excellent series, intriguing lead characters, a richly imagined world and backstory, an unusual but reasonably consistent magic system, a particularly well realised villain in the form of Melyn, oh and did I mention dragons? The overall narrative probably falls into the category of epic-light, there are coming of age elements for both Benfro and Errol and several other character threads, but the events described are contained within a narrower scope than some of the truly epic series out there. There is also less moral ambiguity than found elsewhere, characters are presented in mostly black or mostly white, any shades of grey do not stray far from their base monochromatic position. The only problem I have with this series is a tendency to meander, on a handful of occasions I felt frustrated that events were not progressing due to poor communication or memory loss. The most frustrating thing about this is that I enjoyed the rest of the books immensely, as it is though these periods of stasis do spoil the momentum of the books and this takes a little of the shine off the series as a whole. Despite this, I would still rate these books highly (if those slow sections could have been avoided or just cut short this series would be right up there with my favourites) and I would recommend them to fans of high fantasy, especially dragon lovers.
- Dreamwalker (2013) – Amazon – Book Depository
- The Rose Cord (2013) – Amazon – Book Depository
- The Golden Cage (2013) – Amazon – Book Depository
- The Broken World (2015) – Amazon – Book Depository
- The Obsidian Throne (2016) – Amazon – Book Depository