Mostly because I'm bored, and I just found out that Dragon Fate is not even in the library catalogue yet, even though it's been out for over a month.
5 Worst Dragon Books
5. "Joust" by Mercedes Lackey.
It's Mercedes Lackey. What more need be said? Few writers can pull of such cliche, shallow characters, long-winded monologues, or overly detailed, prettified worlds. Worldbuilding details are good, but they should always be plot-relevant and not mere decoration. "Joust" is actually not too bad as far as dragon books go. The dragons do not talk (At least not in the first two books, and I don't see why that would change), and seem to be on a level of very clever animals with slight telepathic tendencies. They are fed a fantasyland drug to keep them tractable, though of course un-drugged dragons that bond with humans as hatchlings perform much better. Really the only problem with this series is that it is by Mercedes Lackey.
4. "Dragonflight" by Donita K. Paul
This is a kid's book, so I can't really complain of the black-and-white morality, although I would...is that Jesus? Why is there a Jesus in a dragon book? Not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, and kudos for not having a typical vague pantheon, but...the distinction is between a book about religion, a book about religious characters, and religious allegory. The first is acceptable if it asks more questions than it answers (read: The Sparrow), the second if the characters behave like actual religious people and not idiotic fanatics (though there are real ones of those, I suppose. But read: Firethorn) and the third...if you subscribe to the religion and don't want to have your mindset challenged? The Dragonflight series, however, uses religion to support its very simplistic and childlike moral structures. It is a kid's book, I suppose, so I can't really be too hard on it.
3. Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffery
May her soul rest in peace. I never got into the series. I can't remember why; I can't remember many details of what I did read, so I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the characters and stories were not very memorable. Everything else I have is hearsay; namely, some very problematic portrayals of gender roles and relationships. However, since this book is what started the whole dragonrider craze, I shouldn't be too hard on it. Or maybe I should.
2. "Eragon" - Christopher Paolini
The fifteen year old kid had enough dedication to sit down and write a novel from beginning to end. I'll give him that much credit. I can also list all of his sources: McCaffery, Eddings, Tolkien, and Star Wars. David Eddings is the reason fantasy is shit. No, seriously, he codified if not started all of the needless traditions that the genre bears today, though most writers have the decency to not rip off his dull magic system word for word...Anyway, let's talk about Saphira. For starters, she has no personality. A few of the other characters in the books have some interesting quirks, so I'm going to count that as a fault of the character and not the book in general. Basically, she's only there to make Eragon look cool. Like a motorcycle. But for her, Eragon (not quite an anagram of "Garion") is the whiny little bitch hero typical of the Eddings and Star Wars traditions; can't blame Tolkien for that one - Frodo was middle-aged!
1. Dragonlance - created by Margaret Weis and Terry Hickman
Hoo boy. Where to start? The plots are based off of D&D campaigns. No, really, I'm not making that up. The writing quality varies because there are so many different writers, but the dragons. Ah, the dragons. I don't believe they are actually in a lot of the books. When they are, they are color-coded for your convenience. Shiny dragons are good, rainbow dragons are bad. And they talk, but they don't really do much when they're not being ridden around. The only good part I can see is that since there are so many writers, some have tried to play around with the structure; there's a short story about an awkward misunderstanding with an albino silver dragon, and one where an evil dragon questions his evilness but doesn't actually follow-through (I think he dies, actually...). On the whole, though, for a serial with "Dragon" in the title, they don't really do a whole lot. Only ranks above Eragon because it is written by adults who should know better, but let's face it. They don't.
Now before you start calling me a hater, here are my top 5 good dragon books
5. "Eon: Dragoneye Reborn" - by Allison Goodman
Full review here. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a girl who dresses as a boy in order to get a dragon companion. Which is a horrible plot, so you can imagine my surprise when it didn't quite suck. The setting is randomly Asian, and the dragons are life-draining energy beings rather than scaly kittens. The story isn't exceptional, but it has some good points and on the whole isn't bad.
4. "Dragon's Milk" - by Susan Fletcher
I haven't read these books in forever, so I can't give too many details. It might not be as good as I remember, and if I haven't read it in forever it probably isn't the best thing ever. But since I kept excusing "Dragonflight" for being a kid's book, here's another kid's book for contrast. The story is about a girl who ends up caring for three dragon hatchlings after their mother dies or something. They have to go on the run because people kill dragons in this world. And there are people in difficult situations making difficult choices and facing the consequences, instead of people in difficult situations making difficult choices and having their problems vanish as a reward for making the right choice. I think maybe one of the dragons died, too. Not sure. Kid's books can be pretty dark, you know.
3. The Dragon Quartet - by Marjorie B. Kellogg
This series is just frickin' weird. The first book takes place in medieval Germany, where this girl finds an earth-dragon and goes on this journey with it to find her destiny or something, ends up falling through some kind of time portal where, in the second book, she meets a boy from modern-day Africa who is bonded to a water dragon, and then they go back to medieval Germany for a brief bit and end up in this post-apocalyptic future run by a fire dragon, and the air dragon is really a computer, and the dragons are really transdimensional beings who incarnated at certain points in time in order to save the human race from global warming...or something like that. I should really re-read those. They're just so...weird. And different. See, that is what fantasy is supposed to mean - creating your own unique vision of a world. Not pseudo-medieval whiny farmboy kill the dark lord questing.
2. Age of Fire - by E.E. Knight
Think "Wicked" for Dragonlance. The original book, not the musical. It's a sort of dark reimagining of a familiar world (not Krynn specifically, just the whole freaking genre paradigm). You've got your elves/dwarves/humans/+2, and all kinds of crazy race relations. And you have the dragons. The book is told from the dragon's point of view as hominids try to kill them or enslave them. They end up sort of turning that around and starting a dragon empire and making it very clear that in the dragon/rider relationship, the dragon is boss. The characters are all very interesting, and in the latest (well, next-to-latest) I actually started to feel for them a bit (That poor Copper! - oh yes, it has amazing technicolor dragons, but physical appearance does not correlate with moral alignment), and I really want to read the last one, Dragon Fate.
1. Temeraire - by Naomi Novik
Napoleonic Wars. With dragons. It is awesome. Yes, the dragons tend toward the scaly kitten end of the spectrum, but they are not pastel greeting-card kittens, they are real live animals that poop on your floor. Metaphorically speaking. Actually, they are not animals. They are people, and Novik does well building a subplot of a sort of impending dragon civil rights movement (I'm only about halfway through the series). Also, historical detail. England, Africa, China, Ottoman Empire, Prussia...Holy crap, that woman has done her research. So yes, Temeraire is adorable. He talks (not telepathic, thank the gods). He chose his rider from the egg and loves him oh-so-much. And he is a slave. And seeing him struggle to compromise that with his love for his rider is so...woobifying. Squee.
Yeah. Dragons. You probably think I think too much about dragons. Funny that I don't usually write about dragons. There might be some in my shapeshifter story, but they're not really in the plot. Dragons just seem so overdone and so rarely done well. At the same time, all the possible subversions are already being done (and done well). So for the time being, I remain a dragon appreciater rather than a dragon writer.
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