The reason I'm doing this is, in any list of "dragon books" or "books about dragons" from that time period, you seldom see us as the main characters. We may be a crucial plot point, but more often than not, the protagonist is a non-dragon, or worse.... a shifter.
So, I have taken it on myself to write reviews of books from the era wherein we're the protagonists.
If nothing else, it might be enlightening to think about how humans envisioned our fantasy counterparts at the time.
Rules are:
1. The protagonist must be a dragon. This means that Eragon, Dragonriders of Pern, and the How to Train Your Dragon series are disqualified. If they share the spotlight with a human, this is fine as long as the dragon gets either equal or greater page time, and is the viewpoint character who changes the most over the course of the story.
2. NO SHIFTERS. Shifters do not count as dragons (I'll make an exception for the first book on this list, since it's not technically shifting so much as TF). To define a shifter: a shifter is a dragon that can take on human or mostly-human form. Dragons taking anthro form is fine, so long as it's an anthro dragon like in real life. I find the idea of being forced to look like a human for most of my days unappealing, and don't care for fantasy where that's what happens.
3. If I haven't actually finished the book in question, I must declare as much, and forfeit the right to give it a rating.
4. Exceptions lean more towards exclusion than inclusion. In all likelihood, I won't be reading Wings of Fire. Its plot doesn't interest me in the slightest, and I lean away from YA novels in general.
5. Given the circumstances these books were written under, I'm not going to knock them for being inaccurate. Back then, there was no "inaccurate". As long as their dragons retain some level of feasibility or verisimilitude, I will look over any differences from our reality.
In these, I'll be going over my four points: Writing, Characters, Setting, and Plot. Then, I'll give a Conclusion.
So, without further ado, let's review us some books!
The Dragon and the George, by Gordon R. Dickson:
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| Is that lizard on the cover supposed to be him? I don't see any wings. |
You think I'm throwing shade, but this was originally published as a novella titled "St. Dragon and the George", with fewer scenes and a much different, more abrupt ending.
To be honest, if I hadn't heard all the hype this book gets, I would've put it down before my usual 17 page rule. The beginning is agonizingly slow, and while I understand it's necessary to make Angie more of a character than in the original novella, it could've stood to be much more brief.
The Writing:
The writing is... okay? The prose is inoffensive, and occasionally clever, but it lacks the economy of writing I want from my high fantasy tales.
One thing I notice is that fight scenes seldom have a sense of immediacy, as if the writer couldn't completely picture how they happened. Every battle is described as having happened too quickly for the protagonist to have processed. "[the battle] seemed to jump abruptly, like a faulty movie film . . ." "The action around him was a blur." And the writing feels as schizophrenic as that during fight scenes.
You could argue it's because Jim is unused to combat, and is dissociating during these moments— causing the dragon he's possessing to take the reigns— and you'd have a solid case. Personally, it had the effect of taking me out of the moment.
I also notice instances of telling rather than showing: when Sir Brian is introduced, I noticed that nearly half a page is dedicated to telling us what he's like, and what kind of conversation he's having with Jim. Just show us how it went down! We can deduce the rest.
The Characters:
Jim is... honestly, tolerable as far as protagonists go. He reacts to any given situation like you'd reasonably expect an actual human from the 70's to. Beyond that, though? I can't really call him remarkable in any way. He's an everyman character, through and through, but at least he's not ineffectual. I will say this, he's not flat: he does grow to realize the severity of his situation, and that he's not invincible just because he's a dragon (pretty relatable).
Angie is barely in this, but she has more personality than Jim, I'll give her that. She takes the whole "damsel in distress" thing pretty well, all things considered, and acts as a rational counterpoint to Jim's more impulsive tendencies.
Carolinus is a device. He's to this book what Gandalf was to The Hobbit. He's a grouch, and we never really see him warm up to the other characters beyond "Hey, you did a good thing and I'm grateful, now please stop being a dumbass".
Sir Brian is pretty likeable: he both fulfills and subverts the expectations of a noble knight-errant, being chivalrous without going full Quixote.
Aragh has a very takes-no-bullshit, survival-of-the-fittest attitude, which makes him a great foil for Brian, though I wonder why the hell he's friends with Gorbash.
Danielle is a decently interesting character, though I find the very obvious crush she has on Jim baffling; I know dragons are sexy, but she seems more interested in the prince she's convinced Jim secretly is. Can no woman in this book exist without her thoughts being occupied by men?
Smrgol: No, I didn't misspell that. Gorbash's uncle, older and much wiser than most dragons in this setting; he hopes to establish a truce between humans and dragons. Proud to be a dragon, and insists that all dragons should compose themselves with dignity. Pretty progressive guy.
Dafffyd Ap Hywel feels like an extra; he's badass, being the best bowman on the planet, but what else is he? Not a whole lot, beyond Danielle's love interest.
Secoh has no real presence in the narrative. You could excise him from the book entirely, and it would miss nothing. His arc is abruptly resolved, which was fine when this was a short story, but when you have a novel's worth of time to do as you wish with the characters, there's no excuse to leave one this severely under-developed.
The biggest problem with this cast of characters is that there's too many of them going on all at once, so the author only has time to focus on a few of them, meaning that very little time is given for character development. Nobody really fundamentally changes as a person, aside from Secoh, and even his arc has no real explanation for how he got from Point A to Point B beyond a pep-talk from Smrgol.
The Setting:
The setting is not all that well defined. I didn't even know it was supposed to be an alternate-universe Middle England until I read the TV Tropes page (to be fair, Aragh does refer to himself as an English wolf, so you could chalk it up to a lapse of reading comprehension on my part).
Dragons here are reasonably fleshed out; they're described as having an instinctive lust for gold and wine, dragon physiology is elaborated on in detail, and their psychology is touched on.
In terms of other lifeforms, it's implied to be very standard high fantasy, with one exception:
Sandmirks. These have an interesting gimmick: alone, they're weak little rodents. But they always come together in groups, and their collective cries drive anything that isn't an English wolf (or maybe Aragh's just being patriotic when he says this) to insanity. They also have the metal-as-fuck backstory of being animals who died in agony and madness.
This is a good, creative monster.
Problem is, in terms of monsters Jim has to reckon with, they're all the author ever uses (save for the final battle). Otherwise? Just humans and sandmirks.
It'd be like if Harry Potter had nothing but Dementors to fight; they're menacing, but it gets repetitive very fast.
Cosmologically speaking, the only real evidence of the divine would be the Auditing Department, which brings up an interesting point: magic is treated like a business transaction with the universe, karma acting as its currency. Thus, Carolinus becomes that strange paradox of a wizard who uses magic— his understanding of which being a wizard's defining feature— as little as possible.
This is a trope I actually like, as it gives magic weight, and it's a handy answer for "Why don't they use it for so-and-so?" that comes up in, say, Harry Potter (which, to be fair, does establish that there's enough margin for error that careless use of it can and will go awry). Jim becoming a hero gives him enough credit with the Auditing Department to tie up any and all remaining plot threads fairly quickly.
Carolinus bangs on about the forces of Chance and History, which I couldn't decipher until I'd read TV Tropes' explanation of it: Chance represents Chaos, and History represents Order. Why they're not just called that is beyond me.
It's clear that the author put a good amount of thought into certain parts of the setting, but left too many other things blank.
The Plot:
I'm going to let TV Tropes outline the plot, here:
[The story is about] Jim and Angela Eckert, two college graduates who are whisked away to another dimension that is nearly identical to that of Medieval England, except there's wizards, dragons, and fairies running around and everyone speaks the same language. ⋯ Jim Eckert is trapped in the body of the dragon Gorbash, and must rescue his wife from the Dark Powers, who are attempting to wrack the fabric of the world's space and time. ⋯ Jim poses as a Baron from America to gain the trust of the local Englishmen.
Portal Fantasy is not my genre.
Oh, there's GOOD Portal Fantasy out there, like the first few OZ books (after Dorothy and her family immigrate to OZ for good, it doesn't really count, but it's still really good), the Narnia series (though Narnia had a nasty habit of having Aslan butt in when the protagonists were in over their heads, but it did get better about that as it went on), and of course the latter two thirds of His Dark Materials.
Problem is, it was so prevalent during the 70's that it's hard for a book from this period to truly stand out, which I don't think this one does.
The plot ultimately feels like it's on a very rigid set of rails from the minute Jim enters the high fantasy world; the action is largely the result of arbitrary cosmic forces, rather than natural decisions on the part of the characters. This isn't simple contrivance, either, Carolinus is used as a device to flat-out state that this is what's happening.
The only reason Jim doesn't go straight to where the dark forces are keeping Angie is because Carolinus flat-out tells him that he has to go find Companions. That is, he literally has to let destiny lead him to a specific set of people, then go to the tower. No hints as to who these people are, just that he'll find them if he's looking.
You could argue that this is a meta way of pointing out how chance meetings in fiction aren't actually chance at all, and if that's what the author intended, then that's actually very clever.
Again, though, this leads to the plot feeling very on-rails.
(And yes, I'm aware that The Neverending Story does more or less the same thing for its first act, but that's all part of a Gambit on the Childlike Empress's part to get Bastian invested in the book's plot; once the second act kicks in, the rails are gone.)
Another problem is, too many situations Jim finds himself in require him to be bailed out by one of his friends. The way I see it, a Deus ex Machina is fine if it's just a quick way to establish a character as much more knowledgeable about the world around them than our naive protagonist, and is only used once. Here, however, it feels as if Jim could land himself in whatever trouble he felt like, and someone would show up if he couldn't get himself out in time.
Another way it shows that this is a short story with added content is the overly drawn-out raid Sir Brian's enemy's castle to rescue his girlfriend. It's great that his backstory comes into play and gives Brian reason to join Jim's party, but the whole thing feels drawn out, as if the writer had run out of plot ideas, and he needed to make his book longer.
And once said castle is taken, everyone goes off to pursue Sir Brian's archenemy, but Carolinus is like "You stop that! The third act's gotta happen, now!", which makes you wonder why the writer bothered.
Make the fact that everyone's going on foot enough to stop Jim from flying straight to the tower, and put interesting things in their way, instead of sidetracking them like this to fill up time.
If there's one thing I can appreciate, however, it's that Jim, in the end, elects to stay in this awesome new fantasy world where he has a bunch of interesting friends and a whole country's worth of people who adore him.
You do have to wonder whether his friends and family back home are upset that he's gone, though, or if he ever misses any of them. Maybe that gets addressed in the sequels, who knows. I have no interest in reading them.
Ultimately, the plot feels too much like something I've read before, and that's one of the worst things a plot can feel like.
Conclusion:
Overall, I can understand why a lot of people liked this book; it has its redeeming qualities, and there are plenty of charming moments throughout, but it's never truly anything special. It's very high-concept, but not much else.
Three out of five dragons.
πππ
Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton (mostly finished):
This is not a Fantasy novel. Not really.
Despite the entire cast consisting of dragons, there's little else that's (by the standards of the time) "fantastical" in nature. No magic, no other fantasy creatures, nothing.
No, this is a massive piss-take on Victorian novels.
And I love it to death.
The Writing:
Full disclosure, the Victorian novel is not my genre. This book was very much an acquired taste, for me.
Most of the book is characters talking, but, on the surface, little is actually happening. But then, this is a Victorian novel; the conflict is entirely social. The action isn't in combat and set pieces, it's the social game. It's the sociopolitical maneuvering of every dragon in this tangled web of corruption and decadence and oppression.
The writing is very deliberately long-winded and flowery, and, once you're used to it, it works. It also comes with the charming literary conceit of having been written for dragons, at one point addressing the gentle readersγΌ and only the gentle ones, not the ones who eat authors who displease them.
Also, I wanna take this moment to expose an odd quirk of mine: despite this being a satire, I seldom found it funny. This is actually the case with a lot of more subtle satirical things I read: I find myself taking everything completely seriously, and somehow it still works.
So, the writing is pretty solid.
The Characters:
Can I be honest, here? I barely remember anyone's names. TV Tropes was again my friend, here.
This doesn't mean they're uninteresting; the characters and their messed-up psychology is the grease that lubricates this farce's plot. It's just that there's so many players in this game that it's hard to keep track of them all, and none of them ever fade out of relevance.
Everyone involved is a terrible person in some way, due to the setting, but some are more sympathetic than others.
I'll just list a few of the more prominent ones.
Bon Agornin: The catalyst for this whole comedy of errors. He dies in the first chapter, and signs point to him having been a terrible person in life (then again, most of this book's cast is, to my delight), and confesses as much to his son Penn, which just screws him over for reasons I'll get into.
Avan Agornin: Bon's son. When his brother-in-law Daverak eats too much of his father's body, he's understandably pissed, and takes him to court. Thus, this novel's plot. Lives his sort-of girlfriend Sebeth, who works as a clerk in his office and writes letters for him at home.
Sebeth: Sebeth has to be my absolute favorite, and I'm appalled TV Tropes doesn't list her as a character. Her life story, as told by her, is a sordid one: sold into prostitution by her father, abused physically and sexually by a male for years, only to escape into a society wherein she's essentially a pariah. But she needs no one's pity. Passionate, with a spirit of rebellion and a zest for life, she gets involved in a forbidden religion, and seeks to overthrow the attempted gentrification of the poor side of town.
Penn Agornin: Avan's brother. Parson, de-facto therapist, and overall decent, caring guy. Risks his position in the Church to hear his father's deathbed confession, a practice considered taboo. When called to testify in the court case, he's understandably a nervous wreck. Why he doesn't just leave that part out is anyone's guess.
Selendra Agornin: Poor, poor Selendra. First molested by Frelt, then separated from her beloved sister and made to live with the monstrous Daverak. I have to admire her for joining the Abolitionist movement, but she also comes across as selfish and whiny a lot of the time.
Sher: Nice enough guy, total flake. His mother's entirely right to hover over him, with his irresponsible, impulsive tendencies and weekly love affairs. I can understand why she's so controlling.
Haner Agornin: Selendra's sister. She goes to live with Sher and his classist mother, and falls in love with him, much to said mother's dismay.
Frelt: I. Hate. This. Man. Creepy old fucker, tries propositioning Selendra for marriage, then won't take no for an answer, and basically molests her). He gets away with this, but not without everyone involved hating him.
Daverak: In a cast that mostly consists of terrible people, you need to be especially nasty to qualify. Abusing his long-suffering wife and Selendra, stealing the majority of Bon's body from his children, the works. He's cartoonishly evil, which you'd kind of have to be in order to be a villain in a cast like this.
Each character has their own agenda that throws a wrench into the others' plans
The Setting:
Civilization is a very thin, easily-broken veil for the inherent savagery of this author's dragons.
The entire thing is Victorian-era sensibilities re-contextualized in an alien society wherein they almost make sense. You have lady dragons that have no claws, and are deemed impure the minute a male gets within a few feet of them for the first time. They're treated about how women were in Victorian times.
The clergy tie their wings for the sake of religious dogma, and indentured servants do the same out of fear.
Violence and murder are considered normal, even an inevitable part of draconic society; they have no remorse in killing the weakest among their young, and dragons cannibalize each other to grow bigger and stronger. Everyone's okay with this.
All dragons refuse to eat cooked meat because they find it socially embarrassing (Apparently, everyone in this book was a Extinguist before Extinguism existed; to hell with that, we evolved fire breath for a reason, but this book gets a pass for the reasons I mentioned above).
It's all a mirror that shows the inherent absurdities of the laws of civilization and religion, the arbitrary restrictions humans collectively place on each other that, when looked at by an outsider, are unnecessary and ridiculous (Kingdoms of Elfin does this exact thing, by the way, and it's one of my all-time favorites), and all the ways they love to oppress each other.
The setting's rampant ableism, classism, and sexism are all a portrait both of the realities of the era wherein this book is set, and the secret thoughts humans have to this day. Man truly was the yardstick by which all else was measured.
The Plot:
As mentioned, Bon Agornin has died, his children have cheated out of their inheritance, and it all snowballs from there. Gosh help you if you want a rundown more detailed than that.
This is very clearly more because of personal biases than anything else, but had I obeyed my aforementioned 17 page rule, I would have put this down.
Something, however, possessed me to press on until 50 pages in, and this book finally clicked for me. Very little in this story happens by bad chance, it's all driven by the characters.
Inter-familial politcal warfare, women striving to up-heave the oppressive society they live in, forbidden love, lost fortunes uncovered... this has a lot to hold your interest.
Conclusion:
Sadly, because this book was overdue by the time I got close to the end, I can't give it a rating. That said, I'm far enough in that I'm confident that by the time I do get to finish it, I'll likely be rating it four dragons (π π π π ).
Consider that my de-facto rating until then.
Dragon Champion, by E. E. Knight:
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| Earthlings typically drew us with some pretty impractical wings, but these take the cake! |
Holy hell, where do I start. This is one of the best things I've read. And yes, this IS my genre, so sue me.
The Writing:
The prose is always to the point, not one word wasted. You could easily make comparisons to Robert Howard's prose, in its beautiful economy of language.
When something major happens, the key actions are typically done in less than a paragraph, often lasting no more than a sentence. Often, things happen abruptly, giving you little time to process it, which lets shocking moments be genuinely disorienting in their suddenness. By the time the reader processes that something major has just happened, the characters are already dealing with its consequences. Set pieces seldom last more than three pages, and work all the better for it.
The author takes the reader's limited knowledge of the setting, and uses it against them; all you know about the setting at first comes from Auron's parents, and Auron's limited experience with the world. Combining that with the fact that this is very much a high fantasy setting is the perfect recipe to throw the reader for a loop, which Knight does very, very frequently; myths you believed to be fact are shown to be just that: myths. Things you thought were magical in nature turn out to have perfectly scientific explanations. People you had formed an opinion on turn out to be something entirely different, more nuanced.
The Characters:
Auron/AuRon: The book does not kid around with the fact that Auron is a dragon; he's shown to be capable of empathy and affection, but he's not cuddly towards humans.
Morally, he's very, very fluid, changing as practicality demands; at one point, he kills a small child to pin the blame on a bigger dragon, and drives him out to take his nest.
To call him utterly amoral, however, would be a disservice to his character; throughout the book, we see him looking past old prejudices more than once to befriend members of races he'd been taught to fear and hate. Over the course of the book, he shows a very caring side, at one point looking after an orphaned girl and teaching her how to survive.
Seeing his growth as a character, shedding old biases, be they based in race, gender, or even the makeup of his world, is incredibly satisfying.
Wistala: Auron's sister, shows up briefly in this book before disappearing. She's the protagonist of the sequel.
Djer: Auron's first non-human friend, an honest up-and-coming merchant who convinces his superiors to hire Auron as a guard for their caravans.
NooMoahk: Ancient, senile old dragon. Benevolent, but dangerous when his dementia kicks in.
To go into much more detail about the other characters would be spoiling a lot of the surprises this book has in store.
The Setting:
Dragon psychology is very animalistic, with parents who have no problem with letting their offspring fight and kill each other shortly after hatching, believing it simple natural selection. Males are highly territorial, and can barely hold a conversation without wanting to kill each other. Yet, despite these things, they're nowhere near as awful as the ones from Tooth and Claw.
The book also goes into great detail as to how a dragon's life cycle works, from mating, to infancy, to puberty, even old age. They come in different breeds, some capable of poison, some born without scales (like Auron). While it doesn't go into how dragon flight is possible, nothing about what we'd consider typical dragon biology is handwaved as magical, and I love that.
That's not to say they're entire magicless: dragons have telepathy (funny how the author got that right, though only dragons can participate in it, apparently), and can impart memories to each other in full, clear detail. It's a great way to explain how dragons can mature so quickly, at least mentally.
Also, the fact that males have the second syllable of their name emphasized after they've taken their first flight is a nice way to mark the passage into adulthood (this is why I've been capitalizing Auron/AuRon's name inconsistently throughout this review).
Best part is? Dragons purr (again, like the real thing! We're like big, scaly housecats, when you think about it).
The fact that our hero has to learn a new language almost everywhere he goes makes the setting feel that much more organic; while Parl is the most common language in the setting, it's not assumed as the default like in so many other settings (I'm looking at you, Star Wars and D&D).
Because he can't take on human form, Auron has to live outside of society, at least at first. Eventually, he does earn the right people's trust, and he's accepted as a part of several societies, playing a different role in each one.
This book gets compared with Watership Down very frequently, and the comparison is justified: dragons are, mentally and physiologically, very different from humans, animals have their own languages that can be learned and spoken, and Auron's world imparts a sense of wonder with surprisingly little use of magical elements.
It uses Dwarves and Elves as races, but does a decent amount to make them stand out, such as dwarves cultivating glowing fungi in their beards as a status symbol.
In general, despite hewing to fantasy tropes, it never goes full D&D with it.
The Plot:
This, honestly, has to be the best part of the whole thing.
The plot is never dull, even when it goes on tangent after tangent. Even things that have no real impact on what happens later don't feel pointless. AuRon grows from every experience.
The central conflict is built up more and more as the book goes on, every character's woes, however seemingly unrelated, are ultimately tied to it. By the time the main antagonist finally does show himself, it doesn't feel like he came out of left field.
Characters you think have faded out of relevance crop back up again when you've nearly forgotten them, with renewed purpose. Every choice Auron makes has long-lasting, often unpredictable consequences.
Every single time a tired high fantasy clichΓ© seemed ready to rear its ugly head, the book surprised me by doing something entirely different. I'm loathe to describe too much of this, for fear of spoiling the book's many surprises.
Even the main villain is written with humanity; his actions are unforgivable, but you can see where he's coming from. He's more the product of what's wrong with this world than a cause of it.
Conclusion:
Go read this book, now.π π π ππ²
That about wraps up this post.
If anyone has a book they'd like for me to look into, by all means, comment below!
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