Eona: The Last Dragon Eye by Alison Goodman

From The Week of August 27, 2012 For all of the good it can do when properly harnessed, power remains a terrifying tool. When wielded as a weapon, it has the capacity to devastate entire nations, tearing down societal edifices that have stood for centuries. When wielded for personal gain, it can carve destructive swaths through families and relationships, casting aside the debris of broken lives in order to attain its master's ultimate goal. But perhaps most calamitous to us all is when it is captured, or bestowed upon, the young and the unready, those poor souls who desire it but lack the will and the wisdom to control it. For such an outcome is surely the first step down the road to anarchy. Power can please or harm, heal or annihilate, build or crush. Ms. Goodman demonstrates in the meandering conclusion to her epic duology. In a world of swords and emperors, noblemen and villagers, peace and magic flows from the Dragoneyes, twelve men who have bonded themselves to spiritual dragons whose captured power helps to keep the land fertile and safe. These revered conduits are second only in power to the emperor who ostensibly commands them, though, it is difficult to imagine how even he would prevent them from working in concert against him, such is their might. And yet, for all of their immensity, the power of the spiritual dragons has been slowly fading for generations, to the extent that feats once easily accomplished are now a struggle for these legendary men.

The product of a desperate scheme, Eona, a girl disguised as a boy in order to be allowed into the choosing ceremony for new Dragoneyes, was unexpectedly selected by the Mirror Dragon, the Emperor's own dragon thought long lost. But Eona's elevation has caused an upheaval in imperial society, the tides of which have washed the emperor from his throne and allowed cruel, power-hungry usurpers to take his place. They desire the concentrated power of all of the spiritual dragons and they are more than willing to kill Eona to attain it. Forced into exile, Eona is awkwardly folded into a resistance movement against the new imperial order, but is her destiny in step with the mission of vengeance her comrades have chosen, or will the power she can barely control destroy friends and foes alike?

The riotous conclusion to the epic begun in Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Eona: The Last Dragoneye struggles to recapture the grace and the exhilaration of its progenitor. The essence of what made Eon wonderful yet remains, the Asian-tinged mythology, the awkwardness of youth, the pain of gender confusion, and the agony of divided loyalties, but the song of these virtues is drowned out by the noise of its story. Hampered by a meandering plot that lurches her characters from peril to peril, Ms. Goodman left this reader benumbed and seasick by the endless spikes of danger its heroine is forced to overcome in order to achieve her destiny and the story's resolution. What's more, several of the narrative's threads are dropped for convenience, signaling a quiet acknowledgement that, while Ms. Goodman had a solid vision of the entwined destinies of Eona and the dragons, she did not know how to advance her characters to the threshold of that conclusion. Consequently, the reader is tossed onto the wind, blown here and there, before finally being deposited on a foreign shore, helpless to watch the story's climax roll in.

Make no mistake, Ms. Goodman is a wonderful talent. And such was Eon's excellence that even Eona's faults are tolerable in order to share in the author's final vision of the piece. But there are simply too many holes, too many conveniences, too many cliches and too many pouts for the work to be enjoyed. Nonetheless, for lovers of coming-of-age fiction, the duology, on balance, is worth a look. It is just a pity that the flow Ms. Goodman enjoyed in the opening effort is not carried on here.

A troubled ending to a bold and ambitious series... (2/5 Stars)