A Critique of Dragons.

Dragons have been a consistent feature of European and Asian folklore for centuries.  Very few creatures - mythical or otherwise - can produce such awe, wonder and fear in us.  And as a result, many books are still written and movies made featuring these monsters.

I never set out to write a book about dragons.  Hell, I never had any ambitions to write at all until just recently.  But you may recall from this post that I have a project in the works about dragons in an alternate-history Germany.  Because of this, I have been researching dragons - by that, of course, I mean reading a whole bunch of books with dragons. 

In this post I will review not the books themselves, but the dragons they contain.

'THE GREAT ZOO OF CHINA' by Matthew Reilly gives us dragons in the modern world.  How?  Okay, they are actually several species of very territorial dinosaurs who laid their eggs in the same place under a massive zinc deposit, protecting them from the cataclysm that killed the rest of the dinosaurs.  What I liked about Reilly's dragons is his vivid detailed descriptions of what they look like, how their sensory organs are similar to other reptiles, and how they behave.

But the way they were named (a minor detail, sure) was wrong.  These dragons were part of a zoo that was to make China the cultural capital of the world.  But did they get Chinese names?  No, they were names after existing animals - the Eastern Grey, Red-Bellied Black and Yellowjackets for example.  They came in different sizes as well, Prince dragons (as big as a 4WD) King dragons (as big as a bus) and Emperor dragons (as big as a plane).  And only the biggest could breathe fire. Now that's all well and good for dragons, but these are meant to be dinosaurs, and there's no evidence whatsoever of dinosaur groups working like that.  Oh, also they could talk.  I mean, through a computer translator and earpiece thing, but yeah.

'DRAGON HEART' by Cecelia Holland was about a sea dragon in a rich fantasy world.  What was compelling about this story is the main character, a princess, was unable to talk to other humans.  She was smart, and could understand them, but when she spoke only unintellegible animal noises came out.  But after sinking the boat she was travelling on and killing the crew, when she was trapped by the dragon on an island she and the dragon could talk to each other.  The dragon wanted her to tell him stories.  Honestly, it's very weird.  Most of the time the dragon keeps to itself, hunting and resting, like your regular monster of the deep.  The folk on land don't even know that such a creature exists.  Yet it has the intelligence to speak to the princess, to understand the stories she weaves, and has an element of sexual attraction for her and even assaults her.  I know, right?  What's going on there?  Anyway after escaping the dragon and returning to her family's castle, which is under seige from a powerful army, she calls out to the dragon to rescue her and her family.  Which he does, and then the princess goes off with the dragon.

'DRAGON KEEPER' by Robin Hobb is something different again.  This book is set in a fantasy world, and for something different, has one of the novel's several points of view being that of a dragon.  This shows us not just what the dragon looks like and does, but also what it thinks, feels and remembers from it's past lives.  The dragons in this world have many points of difference, one being their life cycle.  The book starts with Sisarqua, a sea serpent, struggling up the river to their ancient cocooning grounds.  After, well frankly insufficient time in the cocoon, it hatches and the dragon Sintara emerges.  What is done really well is the dragons' memories of its past lives, when it emerges it expects itself to be fully formed, ready to hunt, ready to fly. So she is horrified to find that she - and the other hatchlings - are stunted, weak, and incomplete.  This gives us a great, yet heartbreaking glimpse of the majesty of what she should be compared to the disappointing reality of what she is.  Normally proud and peerless in the air, on land and underwater, the hatchlings who remain misshapen and incapable of flight become a burden on the human community that supports them.  The humans re-assess their perception of dragons, and the dragons struggle to accept their dependence on humans.  The dragons can understand human speech, but not all humans can understand dragon speech, in an interesting twist.

And now the 'EARTHSEA' cycle by Le Guin.  These are the dragons that first come to my mind. They are an ancient, integral and magical part of the world.  I won't spoil the amazing 'THE OTHER WIND' - the last book in the series - but it's a must-read.  It's hard to talk about *just* the dragons here, because to understand them, you need to know that the whole magic system is based upon knowing the true names of things, the Old Language which was used in the making.  Magicians spend decades learning this ancient lost language, and know only fragments. But dragons, they know the Language of the Making inherently.  They are old, wise, and neither good nor evil by human standards, they are true to themselves and are very dangerous. 

So what have we leaned from these books? Most of them deal with the typical dragon or wyvern, four legs, wings, and the ability to breathe fire, with the exception of 'DRAGON HEART' which deals with a wingless sea dragon.  Regardless, they are all extremely dangerous, act act upon their own wild impulses.  That's not to say they aren't intelligent, there are instances where they communicate with humans in every book.

Next time, I will summarise the dragons from 'SERAPHINA' 'TOOTH AND CLAW' 'PERN' and 'THE DRAGON DIARY'.  Feel free to suggest other dragon novels I should grab as well!

The Twenty Best Books I Read in 2017 (Part 2 - The Top 10)

In my first blog Evidently I'm Going to Regret This I mentioned reading 52 books in 2017 as part of the Popsugar Reading Challenge. In a year where I also wrote an 80,000 word novel while working full-time, by my standards that's a bit of an achievement.

Anyway I thought I could share with the world the twenty books I enjoyed the most from last year, and started last week with Part One. So without further ado, here are four more books I rated as 4 out of 5,

THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND - Endō (1964).
Wow. This is a really sad yet beautiful novel. A salesman (Yoshioka) seduces then abandons Mitsu, a sweet and honest village girl, who he considered beneath him. It's set in post-war Japan, and the characters are strong and thoughtfully put together, and you get a really good insight into life in Tokyo in those days. Throughout the novel you get the story from both character's perspectives, and see how the betrayal of Mitsu effects both their lives as the years pass. I really loved this book, and if any that I gave a 4 to probably should have been a five, this is the one.

THE LITTLE PRINCE - Saint-Exupéry (1943).
What can one say about The Little Prince? One of the sweetest stories ever, adorably illustrated, and full of heart. It's one of those children's books that contains profound meaning and insight that can stay with someone all of their lives.

ANNA KARENINA - Tolstoy (1877).
This novel, a literary classic, is approaching it's 150th birthday. I'm not a history fanatic by any means, but I really appreciate books like this which are basically time capsules from the time they were written (mind you, Verne's 'Around the World in Eighty Days was also written in the 1870's, which I also read last year, has aged so badly it was a struggle to read). The Russia that Tolstoy so vividly described was swept away in the 1917 Revolution, and there are too few accounts of what life was like in those days. It's about Countess Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, who, despite being married, is seduced by Count Alexei Vronsky. It's about Princess Ekaterina "Kitty" Shcherbatskaya, who was counting on an engagement to Vronsky. It's about Konstantin "Kostya" Dmitrievich Lëvin, a friend of Anna's husband and a suitor to Princess Shcherbatskaya. It's a wonderfully detailed and complex novel, which I highly recommend.

THE CHILDREN OF MEN - James (1992).
This is a dystopian novel, similar to that of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' as both are set in the near future under totalitarian governments after massive infertility epidemics. The people of James' world have about given up on the survival of humanity, as no cure to the epidemic has been found, and no child has been born for over 20 years. The protagonist is contacted by a local resistance group, who have become aware of some of the crimes the government has been hiding. It's a really clever story, but does lack the intensity of the 2006 movie adaptation.

Ok. Now are the books that I rates as 5 out of 5. With the previous fourteen, I've pretty much listed them in the order I read them, but the following five I am going to list in order of my preference.

#6 THE REAL STORY - Donaldson (1991).
I gave this book 5 out of 5 because it is the absolute best set-up story for a series I have ever read. Is 'The Real Story' (Book one of 'The Gap Cycle') we are introduced to Captain Angus Thermopyle, an absolute brute of a space-pirate, the lowest of the low, who is the sole crew of his ship, Bright Beauty. Nick Succorso is the opposite of Angus, a clean, handsome, and seemingly honourable captain of Captain's Fancy. And appearing with Angus at one of the scummiest bars on Com-Mine Station is ensign Morn Hyland, a beautiful young woman who works for the United Mining Companies Police. From the outset everyone know's something's up, and everyone has a plan for getting what they want. Donaldson has put this together so cleverly, every chapter there's a new critical piece of information that's revealed, or a new perspective that's provided that changes everything. If you like sci-fi, read it. But be warned, It's not for the squeamish.

#5 DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? - Dick (1968).
Oh, the humanity! That's what it comes down to, for me. It's probably no secret to you that Philip Kindred Dick is one of my favourite authors. What he does so well is write the stories of regular people; people with issues at work, people with not-so perfect relationships, people with drug issues, and put them in mind-bending sci-fi settings. So he wrote a lot about what it means to be human, and that doesn't change whether it's a story set in the 60's, or on a post-apocalyptic Earth, or on Ganymede, or on 'The World Jones Made'. And here he's writing about a bounty hunter trying to eliminate androids that are so well made that he has to determine their humanity, in a world where real animals are almost extinct and imitations are everywhere. He's writing about 'specials' - people impacted by the radiation and their humanity. Where does one draw the line? And by the way, I prefer the book.

#4 A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA - Le Guin (1968).
From a book that has amazing movie adaptions to a book whose adaptions completely suck. I did mention my love of the Earthsea cycle in this earlier blog Books and Movies that I Love. It's often overlooked, but the protagonist is a Person of Colour, who through trials and struggles becomes the greatest Archmage of the islands. It's amazing because Le Guin's magic system and dragons are the best that I've read, and the prose is so deep, simple and profound that I have no words. It's a simple story, but it stays with you. It's quite simply perfect.

# 3 A SCANNER DARKLY - Dick (1977).
Yes. I know. Philip K. Dick again. A Scanner Darkly is a semi-autobiographical book, focusing on the lives of a group of drug users, with the protagonist (Robert Arctor) an undercover narcotics officer, who is given the job of spying on himself. The police are trying to discover the source of the deadly Substance D, Arctor's drug of choice. Over time, the drug starts to impact on Arctor, and he becomes more and more unstable, and is forced to go to a rehab clinic. Was he a pawn in the hands of the police, who knew his addiction and impossible task would lead him there? Was it worth it? Do the ends ever justify the means? At the end, Dick dedicates this book to the friends he had lost or who were permanently damaged due to the drugs they took, which I found really touching.

#2 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - Burgess (1962).
Another book mentioned in this Blog, A Clockwork Orange is one of my all-time favourites. Why it's so great is the creative use of language, the devotchkas, the tolchocks, the droogs, and all the ultra-violence. Very horrorshow. The author created a new language 'Nadsat' which is borrows heavily from Russian for this novel, and while it may take a while to get used to, there's usually enough context provided to understand the words. So as a reader and someone interested in languages, I just love it. It's so creative and brilliant and just gets in your head like nothing else. But Burgess' linguistic skills aside, the novel itself, the story it tells, is just great. Put simply, the message from this book is that children will always rebel. No matter what the schools or parents or police do, the kids will always do their own things, and discover who they are in their own way. But they will not stay miscreants and hooligans forever, they will grow up and grow out of the madness of their teenage years.

#1 ALONE IN BERLIN - Fallada (1947).
This is not a fun read. It was one of the first anti-Nazi novel to be published by a German after World War II. 'Alone in Berlin' (or 'Every Man Dies Alone') tells the story of a middle aged working-class husband and wife who, after receiving word that their son had died serving their country, join the resistance. This is based on a true story, the couple wrote messages denouncing Hitler and the Reich, (“Hitler’s war is the worker’s death” for example) and dropped them throughout Berlin. They knew this was a capital crime, and should they be caught, would be executed. So it's the story of ordinary heroes against impossible odds. But it's also the story of the ordinary Berliner during the war years, the menacing and dangerous times they faced, especially those who disagreed with Hitler's policies and just wanted the war to end. And that's one of the reasons that I've given this book the Number 1 position, because my mother's family were Berliners, and they hated Hitler. It gave me an insight into what they endured, and then - after surviving the war and Nazi rule, they suddenly found themselves citizens of The Soviet DDR (German Democratic Republic).


So that's my list. Go ahead and let me know your favourite books that you read last year. One of the telling things is that very few recent books made the top 20 - 'The King's Justice' and 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' - so one may ask, out of the 52 novels I read last year, what else was published since 2010? I read 'The Long Earth' (Pratchett & Baxter) 3 Stars. 'Here I Am' (Safran Foer) 2 Stars - absolutely awful. 'The Lords of Salem' (Zombie) 3 Stars. 'The Martian' (Weir) 3 Stars - good, funny, engaging but zero character development. 'Ready Player One' (Cline) 2 Stars. I guess for what's left of 2018 I'm going to try to read a lot more recent books! A already have 'Children of Blood and Bone' 'The Fifth Season' and 'The Astonishing Colour of After' on by TBR pile, feel free to suggest any other recent must-reads!