Dark Heart

The third book of this series focuses on Kitiara's younger days and how she took care of the young brothers Caramon and Raistlin. The parts about Caramon and Raistlin are very good as they shed light on their childhood and their unique relationships with each other as well as Kitiara (which gave it an extra star). The parts about Kitiara were disappointing though. Her character is very unique and has the potential to have very intriguing plot built around her. Too bad the plot fell short. It was like reading a couple of disjointed trivial short stories.

Well Kitiara, considering how you were in The Chronicles, this origin story took me by surprise. It started off well enough, showing how she helped raise her half brothers due to her mother's illness and segwayed into how she eventually came to work with mercenaries. Kit led a tough life and wanted nothing more than to adventure away from her boring home life, find her missing father and become rich and powerful. The pace did slow down a bit once she became enamored by a passing royal during one of her stints home in Solace and it was sort of an eye roll moment for me, but she never once became a love sick puppy which I appreciated. It would have ruined her tough as nails attitude. I enjoyed reading what little there was about Rasiltin in this book. Hands down he will be my favorite book character of all time. I was hoping to see more of how Kit became drawn to the Dark Queen's forces as we see her in The Chronicles, and how in the world she came to be a dragon rider. I'm guessing in the Preludes series there will be more on this. Overall it wasn't bad. I felt Tina Daniell did a pretty good job of sticking to Kitiara's personality and keeping her choices mostly within the realm of what I felt Kit would do, but some of the plot points needed work.