When I first picked it up, it was amazed just how different this was from the other fare to be found in bookstores (yes, books were sold in actual stores. Nowadays, female fantasy authors are a pretty common sight, so it's a bit shocking to consider just how ahead of its time Dragon Prince was in terms of what could be done in a traditional fantasy novel.

Which makes this book and the various series it spawn so interesting. Gather round children, and cast your minds back to the ye old days of the late 80's/early 90's, when fantasy was still very much an underground thing, most stories were tedious Tolkien retreads or Dungeons and Dragons sessions put down on paper, and writers of the feminine persuasion were notably light on the ground. Yet caught in the machinations of the Lady of Goddess Keep, and of Prince Rohan and his sworn enemy, the treacherously cunning High Prince, could Sioned alter this crucial pattern to protect her lord from the menace of a war that threatened to set the land ablaze? Sioned, the Sunrunner witch who was fated by Fire to be Rohan’s bride, had mastered the magic of sunlight and moonglow, catching hints of a yet to be formed pattern which could irrevocably affect the destinies of Sunrunners and ordinary mortals alike. And, in a land where dragon-slaying was a proof of manhood, Rohan was the sole champion of the dragons, fighting desperately to preserve the last remaining lords of the sky and with them a secret which might be the salvation of his people. First and foremost, he sought to bring permanent peace to his world of divided princedoms. When Rohan became the new prince of the Desert, ruler of the kingdom granted to his family for as long as the Long Sands spewed fire, he took the crown with two goals in mind.

Sunrunner's Fire by Melanie Rawn