Fes and Jayell are traveling alone after betraying both the empire and the rebellion, which is the sort of sentence that tells you immediately how deep into a series you are standing. The audiobook runs seven hours and forty-eight minutes, and the series field calls it the third Dragonwalker book. A problem arrives before the story does, though: the author field on this record names George R. R. Martin and the category places it under arts and entertainment with the tag Art, and neither of those has anything to do with the book the description summarizes. Settle that first.
Five Signals Point Away From the Printed Byline
Count what agrees. The description names Fes, Jayell, the Deshazl and a broken alliance with an empire. The series field says The Dragonwalker, volume three. All five written responses describe that same story, one of them by name. A narrator credit and a seven-hour runtime belong to a novel rather than to an illustrated reference work. Against those elements stand exactly two fields: the byline and the Art tag. That remains inference rather than certainty, since nothing on the page resolves it outright, but five signals pointing one way against two pointing the other is not a close call, and the instruction is identical either way. Confirm the author before you order.
One response settles it as far as any response can. Writing in January 2023, having just finished what it calls the third volume in the Dragonwalker series, it names D. K. Holmberg as the author and places that writer among its five favorites in science fiction, then adds that this volume brings closure to the first part of a larger story. Readers do not usually announce the byline of the book they are reviewing. This one did, and on a record like this, that single line outweighs the field printed above it.
Christian Rummel Introduces New Characters at Volume Three
Taken as what it plainly is, the premise has a genuine engine. Fes and Jayell have burned both sides, so the only people left who might help them are the ones who want the dragons raised, which is precisely the outcome everyone else is fighting to prevent. Fes is meanwhile closing in on what being Deshazl means for him, and a new threat wants to use that connection to destroy the empire. The copy states the real question outright: whether he wants the protection of the empire, the rebellion, or only himself. Fantasy of this scale rarely narrows to anything that clean.
Writing in January 2021, one reader retells the sequence that sets everything moving: a break-in at the temple of the fire wizards to take dragon relics that would give Jayell more power over her own abilities, then the escape that goes wrong and the help Fes has to find. That is a fair sample of the register: heists, relics, escalating magical stakes, a friendship under load. Christian Rummel is the only credited voice, and at volume three he is introducing a cast that a newcomer has never met, so keeping characters separate matters more here than it would at book one. Sample a scene with dialogue in it rather than the opening pages.
One Reviewer Finds This Volume Slower and Repetitive
Ten weeks ahead of the release date printed here, a February 2019 entry filed four stars and a criticism that deserves weight: a great deal of self reflection in this one, repetitive in stretches, with the first few books rated higher and this volume described as slower going than the others. Interior monologue is a real hazard midway through a long series, where a protagonist keeps re-examining what he has already learned so that nobody gets lost. That entry closes by hoping things look up in the next few books, which is a soft verdict wearing the clothes of a compliment.
Read the star line with equal suspicion. It prints 4.6 while the counter beneath it registers exactly one rating, and a single person voting has five options: one star, two, three, four or five. A 4.6 is not among them. So either the counter has mislaid most of the ratings that produced the average, or the average was inherited from a different edition of this record. Five people wrote full paragraphs here, which by itself puts a count of one in doubt. Treat the number as decoration and the written entries as the actual evidence.
Nor does anything in the title warn you this is a third volume. A buyer landing on The Rise of the Dragon sees a name, a dragon and a seven-hour runtime, and only the series field, which sits well below the fold on most listings, carries the number three. One entry from September 2018, eight months before this file was published, describes finishing book three and reaching straight for the fourth, and calls the lead character Fezarn where the description and two other entries use Fes. Small inconsistencies, but they accumulate into an argument for starting where the story starts.
Already Deep in the Dragonwalker Sequence
Anyone already deep in the Dragonwalker sequence is the audience for volume three, along with readers whose appetite runs to dragon lore, relic hunting and a protagonist discovering an inheritance he never asked for. A May 2022 response frames the pleasure and the impatience in one breath: a strong story wrapped around the mystery of what Fes is, with the solving of that legacy making the series intriguing, and with the arrival at his full potential taking a long time to come. That is a fair description of what a middle volume feels like.
Hold off if this would be your entry point, if you came for the book the byline suggests, or if repetition inside a protagonist's own head wears you down quickly. Hold off as well if you would rather wait for a record whose fields agree with one another, because almost everything in the presentation here, the name above the title, the shelf, the star line, points somewhere the story does not go.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the byline on this listing match the story being described?
It does not appear to. The description, the series information and the reader responses all point to a Dragonwalker novel following Fes and Jayell, and D. K. Holmberg is named as its author inside that written column. The byline says George R. R. Martin; the shelf says Art. Verify the writer before ordering anything.
Can I start the audiobook here without the earlier volumes?
Not comfortably. The record files this as the third Dragonwalker book, and the story opens with its two leads already outlawed by the two powers they double-crossed. Four of the five written entries treat it as a continuation rather than a starting point. Begin at book one unless being dropped mid-arc suits you.
Is the audiobook long enough to work as a standalone story?
Just under eight hours is compact for epic fantasy, and the file is built as continuation rather than as self-contained narrative. It opens in motion and expects you to arrive carrying two books of context already. Treat it as one movement inside a considerably longer piece rather than as an evening on its own.
Why would a dragon novel be filed under Art?
That shelf almost certainly belongs to the same mismatch as the byline. Nothing in the description, the series information or the reader responses points to visual art or an illustrated history; the record describes relics, rebellion and dragons. The tag will send browsers hunting art books into an epic fantasy sequel.
