I read: Playing to the Gods

Playing to the Gods  by Melanie Rawn
(book five in the Glass Thorns series)


I've been a fan of Melanie Rawn since I first read the Dragon Prince series.  I had never in my life read an entire series of books straight through without breaking it up with other side things to keep from getting bored.  But I devoured those books, breathing them in like they were air.

The Glass Thorns series has been a very different experience because I was picking them up as they were released, and having to hunt for them because they didn't seem to be on any regular schedule.  But I still enjoyed every minute spent reading them.



Rawn manages to create entire worlds that are fully different from our own, with different language and speech patterns but that are still completely recognizable within our own world.  The characters become more and more well-rounded as the stories go on.  The reader is able to develop varying perspectives on the characters as the characters themselves seem to learn and grow.  It's such an interesting balance that she achieves, and one that I envy in the writing.

I also find it interesting that while this is the final book in a series of five, we don't fully find out what the end goal or result is until well into this novel.  Each book could stand as it's own, but pieces together they create such an interesting tapestry, with hints sprinkled throughout their own individual stories before the big story culminates in the final dozen chapters of this final novel.

I'd love to know how Rawn plans out the series she writes.  I imagine there must be large boards with notes and timelines and plotlines and character studies, not to mention the language notes, in order to keep everything straight as there are interwoven strands and pieces that would make any person's brain fuddled.

I do find that it takes me much longer to read her unique worlds, mainly because of the languages she creates within them.  They're just different enough that it takes more thought to process each sentence as it goes.  But it's all part of creating a rich, and interesting world for the characters.

I hope that there are more Melanie Rawn novels in the future to look forward to.

5 stars - for the series as a whole.