This book was a let-down after the first two. In those, I loved the characters, the wit, the stories. The writing has always been straightforward and easy to read, which continues here and I do appreciate that. The world is also interesting, but it didn't feel as magically wonderful this time around, maybe because there wasn't as much world-building or maybe just because the story didn't grip me enough to care. There were some interesting plot developments toward the end, for which I'm glad I stuck this out.
The overall story wasn't as engaging as the first two books, neither was the wit between the characters, and this book introduced this new character who was way too on-the-nose supposed to be the copy-pasted "not-like-other-girls", strong, stubborn girl that's being used in every fantasy book these days. She was every YA female lead from the past 10 years. Predictable, unoriginal, and annoying. The characters were immediately fawning over her, impressed by her at every turn, and Tane instantly leaps to a comparison of her situation with his former one when he was younger, which is quiiiite a stretch and seemed illogical. From the beginning of the series I thought Dobson was doing well at straddling a line of social-justice statements by having a female lead who was physically stronger than the male, without shoving it too far down the reader's throat. This time, with Tinga, he shoved. So much for having some escapism in a book; no modern authors seem brave enough to just write good fictional stories without including in-your-face real-world social-justice issues. The Dragon Machine suffered for this narrative, not only in its inclusion but I got the impression that an actual interesting story took a backseat to pushing this narrative front and center.
Maybe this next gripe had been present in the other books, but I didn't notice it if so: This time, the characters were stopping in these dramatic scenes to have an aside about feelings and relationships, when it was completely impractical to do so. Those felt unnatural and shoe-horned in, in a way that broke the immersion. If the other books had these same scenes, the story had been good enough to distract me from the inappropriateness of them. This time, there was nothing to ease the jarringly bad timing of these talks.
This book was decent, and if I hadn't read the other two before it, or read any other modern fantasy, then my main issues may not have been so big to me. In the end, though, this was a disappointment. ( )