What Happens At The End Of The Ballad Of Falling Dragons?

Question

No spoilers please, but need some emotional prep for the finale. My fandom friends said the Ballad of the Falling Dragons ending broke them.

Samir Khan · Answer

This has not yet been completed by me, so I shall refrain from ruining it for myself. The ending appears to revolve around the conflict that ensued in regards to the dragons’ true origin, and whether they are to remain in this world or leave it forever. ‘The Dragon Thief’ deals with the conclusion of this book in a very similar way to how this conflict is resolved. Instead of the thief in ‘The Dragon Thief’ finally managing to steal the treasure he has been searching for, he returns a stolen egg to its nest. This has a huge impact on the political scenery, as it was a completely logical step for the protagonist of the story, and a very character-driven choice.

Connor · Answer

The ending of this book was heartbreaking in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I had expected Elara to come to terms with the dragons being the “bad guys” and then fight them, but instead she realises that the real conflict was between the dragons and the human kingdoms’ greed for power. The final battle was purely psychological between Elara and Veythar and the corrupted High Priest of the Temple. And that is why the title of the book “Falling” is not a reference to a defeat, but a real physical fall. Their sacrifice allows the dragons to fall into a long hibernation deep under the earth, and the last panel of us shows the remains of the molten wings of the dragon as they cool into mountain ranges. I spent weeks deluding myself with fan theories about the hatchling, wondering if it was a reincarnation of Veythar or just a reference to his legacy.

Bianca · Answer

The many falling dragons are not dying, but transforming. This scene ties in with Elara’s decision to fuse with Veythar and writes a new page in the magic of this world. The way the crumbling towers are regrowing into crystal trees is simply wonderful. The fate of the side characters is equally as painful as that of the main characters: General Kael, for example, turns his sword into a plow; the bard writes the ballad of the book. Critics have called this book “ambitious but messy” and that is true, but what I loved about it was that it refused to give simple answers to complex problems. That final shot of the empty throne room with a shaft of light and dust motes sparkling like dragonfire was simply perfect ambiguity.

Yasmin · Answer

It’s so heart breaking and hopeful at the same time. The last monologue of Elara talks about “roots in ruin” but it also makes me happy because the dragons do not die, they get dormant under the earth and it’s said that they will come back when humans have evolved enough to not fight any more. My favourite part of the book was the last scene where a rebel kid is fist-bumping the little hatchling just like Elara fist-bumped the little dragon in her first scene. It is such a peaceful and powerful full circle to the story and makes the bittersweetness of the story so worth it.

Ulysses · Answer

A completely fitting and emotional conclusion to the ‘The Ballad of Falling Dragons’ story. The extremely epic climax scene in which Elara makes the choice to merge her consciousness with that of the last remaining ancient dragon, Veythar, in order to stop an apocalyptic spell from being released to destroy both the species of dragons and that of humans was incredibly powerful. The visualization of their connected souls disappearing up into the stars above the fallen and burned out capital was wonderfully and hauntingly beautiful. The final scene in which Elara and Veythar had connected, followed by an epilogue in which a lone hatchling was found by a group of rebels, is bittersweet but can provide hope for future renewal.

I do not agree with some readers who say this is too open-ended. Instead, the ending mirrors much of the rest of the book, returning to the cycle of destruction and rebirth that defines so much of the novel. For those of us who are eager to unpack every last morsel of story from the book, I especially loved the reprise of that children’s song, and the credits scene with the scholar in the archives wrestling with the scales of Veythar. I immediately went back and read this for more hidden lore about the closing scenes.

Libeth Garlet Cojano · Answer

It reminds me of the myth cycles where gods and heroes aren’t killed but instead become part of the landscape in some form or another. Alaric becomes the new wind to scour the spire from, and the Scion becomes the fertile soil of the new valleys. It’s a very common trope in myth and it feels right for a book and series that is grounded in the feeling of very, very old myth. It doesn’t need more explanation because it’s tapping into a very deep, very archetypal story pattern. We can feel it on an instinctual level. Even though the book is often very confusing, it feels right in a very, very primordial way. In fact, the ending feels older than the book itself.

Rfel · Answer

No, it wasn’t Alaric’s departure that was most heart-wrenching to me — it was Kiera’s. A line in the epilogue refers to “the Wandering Historian” who never wrote the complete story of this event. Kiera, the Wandering Historian. She lived her entire life after that, and could have written it all down — a rigid, unchanging story in the form of a ballad. But instead she allowed it to become rumor, to be a half-remembered story, and her silence is a tribute to Alaric. I had not realized that by writing this down she would have been perpetuating a cycle, and it was Kiera’s great love and wisdom as a secondary character that revealed this to me in the end. It was a profoundly moving moment.

Fizz Awan · Answer

This is actually one of the most frequently confusing points of the Ballad of Falling Dragons for readers. The conflict between Alaric and the First Scion ends not with either of their deaths, but with a merging of their two consciousnesses. Here, Alaric and the First Scion realize that their long-standing conflict is in fact nothing more than a cycle of hatred and bloodshed that has been perpetuated by the ancient dragon-song. And so, in the end, the two combatants are reduced to two statues which then crumble into a single, flowing river – the old identities of the two men lost in the process and merged to form something entirely new. We then follow a cartographer many years after the fact as he stumbles upon a petrified dragon’s egg in the riverbed. Is this a symbol of rebirth? A new beginning? Or is it merely a fossilized remnant of a long-lost memory? The Book ends without answering this for the reader, which some people detest and others find fitting to the themes of the Ballad. The way the author has portrayed history as cyclical and locked within myth is not easily reduced to a neat and happy ending for its characters.

I remain underwhelmed by this, and frankly it's been kind of a cold read. Despite all the chapters leading up to it, breaking the curse is not what Alaric does. He doesn't destroy the First Scion, he doesn't take the throne, he just walks off into the sea of whispers. And he's left, at the end of it all, with his shadow being lighter than a feather. So peaceful. So surrendery. And not, perhaps, the kind of thing one would expect from a series called Falling Dragons. Beautiful writing or no, this is an anti-climax on a scale of epic proportion. And I've read so much wonderful stuff in the chapters leading up to this, I had been hoping for so much more than this. The fandom is split down the middle on this: it's either deep and profound or it's a huge cop-out. I've yet to be convinced of the former.

Salwa Malik · Answer

It’s a love story. Although it’s not a romantic novel, love is the central theme in its broadest sense. The novel shows love, understanding, pain of enemy and courage to put an end to violence and break a cycle of hatred and revenge even at the cost of everything. The ending of the novel is the culmination of all that love and that light that dissolves all forms in it is love that has manifested. It’s cheesy to say that love wins in the end, but that’s exactly what happens. Not by conquering but by dissolving the battlefield. It’s a very powerful and surprising read when you read it with this understanding. All the magical imagery is just a nice wrapping for this simple message.

Michael Estaris · Answer

The last line of the main story before the epilogue is “And the only thing left to fall was silence.” I found this to be one of the most profound lines in the story. All of the conflict, the story of the ballad, all of the noise had to come to an end. What was left in the end was silence, and something so profound can have so much aftermath. Everything after that line is showing us what grows in silence, such as new people, new maps, new curiosities. Instead of showing us what replaces the dragons in the story, the author shows us that something can replace them once the old story has stopped being told. The ending of the story is even more powerful because it shows us space for other stories to be told even if we never get to read them.

Cha Furigs · Answer

Finally, how one writes something is as important as what one writes. The last chapter of The Empire Trip is written in the same style as the rest of the book: long, rambling, cascading sentences that attempt to capture the quality of light in any given scene and the way that forms dissolve into other, sometimes similar, forms. The epilogue, on the other hand, is written in a dry, formal style, as if it were being read from an academic journal. This is not mere style, of course; rather it is the bringing home of a point that has been latent throughout the book. The magical and passionate era of the ballads is over, and what we have now is history, written by someone without passion or interest in what he or she is describing. What happens in the ending of The Empire Trip is the transition from myth to history, from song to stone. And this is something that cannot be captured in a simple summary of the plot of the book; rather it is a brilliant piece of stylistic storytelling.

Libby Salazar · Answer

It’s interesting to read the author’s interviews about the ending of A Song for Summer, as she is usually quite tight-lipped. But here she explains the ending of A Song for Summer is ‘about the moment a song ends—the silence that follows is part of the music’. I had tried to come up with my own reasons for the ambiguity of the ending of A Song for Summer, but I don’t think I had got close to the author’s intentions. The ‘falling’ is the final note of the song fading away. The story is the song, the epilogue is the silence. This makes sense to me and I can now see that this was how the author intended us to read the ending of A Song for Summer. My only wish is to know if Kiera is ok, but this is not important in relation to the artistic intentions of the novel. The story is about the experience of reading a grand, emotional tale and being left with emptiness at the end. Very meta.

Paula Bass · Answer

The ending of The Golem and the Jinni is comparable to the ending of another fantastic work of literature, The Last Unicorn, or even The Dark Tower series. All of these works are marked by a sense of cyclical completion, with ambiguous transformation at their core. If you’re a fan of those works, you’ll probably appreciate this one too. But if you detest those works, then you’ll probably detest this one as well. Not every ending is for every reader, after all. This one demands a lot from its readers: they have to be willing to fill in blanks, to sit with uncertainty, and to appreciate a work largely through mood rather than by resolution of plot points. In short, this ending is a litmus test of your reading preferences.

What Happens At The End Of The Ballad Of Falling Dragons?

13 Answers

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