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rushthatspeaksVery kindly lent me by dorothean.
And well worth waiting for; this is a really good book. It's the sequel to Dragon of the Lost Sea, and the thing is that Dragon of the Lost Sea has the kind of ending that could have been a one-off, that could have stopped there. So Dragon Steel is one of my favorite kinds of book, the kind that points out that endings are beginnings and that it is just never going to be that easy. This book is therefore quite intimately tied to its predecessor, and I would not start here, because there isn't really a recap-- well, there's an attempt at one, but it's a terrible poem, and it both could have been left out and doesn't help one remember any useful information. I think it's the book's major flaw, perpetrating terrible poetry on page one, but once you get past that everything is much better.
The thing that's not going to be so easy is getting that Lost Sea back. The exiled dragon princess Shimmer and her young human friend Thorn have defeated one of the major obstacles in doing so, but now they have to go to the High King of the dragons to explain the remaining issues, and things become... complicated, as they tend to do when you combine the words 'exiled' and 'High King'. Also, Monkey shows up, which is both a help and a hindrance no matter what one might happen to be doing. And there's a Chinese version of the Wild Hunt, which I can only describe as awesome.
This is a book full of beautiful atmospheric detail (since it takes place in an undersea dragon kingdom, primarily), interesting political factionalism, dragons fighting krakens, and various people facing various crises and growing from the experience. It's so good, in fact, that it retroactively makes me annoyed at Yep's entire later Tiger's Apprentice trilogy, which is, and I am in no way exaggerating, ninety percent of the plot/setting/characters of this redone except at half the quality level. I can go through this book and tell you who got translated into which character in that trilogy. I cannot imagine what he was thinking, and I retract my earlier recommendation of the later two books of that one, because it's become obvious to me that he was badly handling material there that he had already done very well. Why would a person do this sort of retread? I don't get it. Fortunately, his currently running fantasy series does not share the same subject matter at all.
I am now looking forward immensely to Dragon Cauldron and Dragon War, which ought to be easier to come by, since the library claims to have them both. (Another thing in life I don't understand: stocking books one, three, and four of a series.) If the next two live up to the first two, I expect I'll want to buy all four and keep them around, because they'll be quite an achievement.
dorothean.And well worth waiting for; this is a really good book. It's the sequel to Dragon of the Lost Sea, and the thing is that Dragon of the Lost Sea has the kind of ending that could have been a one-off, that could have stopped there. So Dragon Steel is one of my favorite kinds of book, the kind that points out that endings are beginnings and that it is just never going to be that easy. This book is therefore quite intimately tied to its predecessor, and I would not start here, because there isn't really a recap-- well, there's an attempt at one, but it's a terrible poem, and it both could have been left out and doesn't help one remember any useful information. I think it's the book's major flaw, perpetrating terrible poetry on page one, but once you get past that everything is much better.
The thing that's not going to be so easy is getting that Lost Sea back. The exiled dragon princess Shimmer and her young human friend Thorn have defeated one of the major obstacles in doing so, but now they have to go to the High King of the dragons to explain the remaining issues, and things become... complicated, as they tend to do when you combine the words 'exiled' and 'High King'. Also, Monkey shows up, which is both a help and a hindrance no matter what one might happen to be doing. And there's a Chinese version of the Wild Hunt, which I can only describe as awesome.
This is a book full of beautiful atmospheric detail (since it takes place in an undersea dragon kingdom, primarily), interesting political factionalism, dragons fighting krakens, and various people facing various crises and growing from the experience. It's so good, in fact, that it retroactively makes me annoyed at Yep's entire later Tiger's Apprentice trilogy, which is, and I am in no way exaggerating, ninety percent of the plot/setting/characters of this redone except at half the quality level. I can go through this book and tell you who got translated into which character in that trilogy. I cannot imagine what he was thinking, and I retract my earlier recommendation of the later two books of that one, because it's become obvious to me that he was badly handling material there that he had already done very well. Why would a person do this sort of retread? I don't get it. Fortunately, his currently running fantasy series does not share the same subject matter at all.
I am now looking forward immensely to Dragon Cauldron and Dragon War, which ought to be easier to come by, since the library claims to have them both. (Another thing in life I don't understand: stocking books one, three, and four of a series.) If the next two live up to the first two, I expect I'll want to buy all four and keep them around, because they'll be quite an achievement.
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Date: 2011-04-09 04:33 pm (UTC)So Dragon Steel is one of my favorite kinds of book, the kind that points out that endings are beginnings and that it is just never going to be that easy.
That's just what I like about this series. It goes on long enough that Yep can get into things like how friendship is difficult and needs to be worked at (whether or not it's magic), and how not all situations have a clear solution that hurts no one, and what it feels like when you're responsible for bad things as well as good.
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Date: 2011-04-10 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-09 04:17 pm (UTC)And I noticed that about "The Tiger's Apprentice" too.
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Date: 2011-04-09 05:21 pm (UTC)This book set a very high bar for my expectations of anything involving both dragons and the sea.
ninety percent of the plot/setting/characters of this redone except at half the quality level. I can go through this book and tell you who got translated into which character in that trilogy. I cannot imagine what he was thinking
I'm glad I never got around to looking for The Tiger's Apprentice, then. He tried a Bards of Bone Plain and blew it?
If the next two live up to the first two, I expect I'll want to buy all four and keep them around, because they'll be quite an achievement.
I have been sad for, oh, God, five years now that my copies are all in boxes. Dragon Steel and Dragon Cauldron were the two I used to re-read most frequently.
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Date: 2011-04-12 05:15 pm (UTC)My only comment is that it only gets better from here, in my pesonal recollection, and I am glad to be warned away from Tiger Apprentice as I had been considering it, but this makes it clear it would fall far short of my expectations.