Since dragons seem to be in vogue in fantasy writing, I thought I’d better read The Dragon Quintet: Five Original Short Novels, edited by Marvin Kaye. It’s been gathering dust as part of my TBR pile since dragons roamed the earth. I had favorites among the stories. And did not finish one. This genre is outside my usual comfort zone, but I found it interesting, nonetheless.
Great Start
“The Judgment,” by Elizabeth Moon, dragon eggs come between Ker, his fiancée, Lin, and the rest of the village. The eggs are like stones, but with sparkling centers. They create greed, bad dreams, and destruction for Tam, one of the elders, and then others. This is a tale of responsibility, greed, wisdom, and refraining from judging, both for humans and the short, bearded rockfolk.
The dragon in “The Dragon House” is little more than a suggestion that lives in the train room—soaking up energy from electricity and creating its own weather patterns there. On the other hand, the dragon in “Judgment” is a shape shifter—sometimes appearing as an elegantly dressed man, sometimes as a fierce, fiery dragon. This dragon exudes heat, and whose breath is “a cloud of steam [that] gushed from its mouth, warm and moist, smelling of baked apples.”
The dragon in “Love in the Time of Dragons” is superficially like the common portrait of a wild, untamed scaly beast with an enormous tail, long teeth, and long jaw. But Graynne, once an abused maid at an inn in a village, tames the dragon. Loves him. And lets him leave. “Love in the Time of Dragons” is the most fairy-tale-like of the stories, yet it turns that trope on its head. The maid becomes the dragon.
Most Entertaining
“Joust,” by Mercedes Lacey, focuses on Vetch, a slave boy, whose life changes when Ari, a Tian Jouster, takes him away from a brutal Tian master to be his dragon boy. Dragons here are either cruel or easy to handle depending on circumstances and how they were treated. Vetch’s changed circumstances highlight that hard work can get rewarded in different ways; that labeling an entire race as monsters isn’t necessarily true. Lacey has expanded this novella into a full-length novel with the same name.
Ending on a Lesser Note
I did not finish the final story. “King’s Dragon,” by Michael Swanwick, involves mechanized flying dragons similar to aircraft. One of these becomes disabled in a village square and commandeers a boy. This story wasn’t my style.
Of these short works, I enjoyed “Joust” the most and may track down the longer work by the same author that expands the adventures of Vetch.
The Dragon Quintet: Five Original Short Novels
edited by Marvin Kaye
© 2004
A Tor Book
Published by: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC