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A review by larkspire
Dragonworld by Michael Reaves, Byron Preiss
2.0
A lot of people in the reviews are saying that the title of Dragonworld is misleading. Well, it is on the immediate level - this isn't a world of dragons. But on another level, it's exactly as cheesy as the rest of the book is. True, we have humans and humans instead of humans and elves, or halflings and humans -- but the Fandorans are short farmers, and the Sim are tall, fair, slim tree-dwellers. Hmmmm. There's an "ancient" man of 70, "elderly" men in their 40s - and yet one man who, at 28, is apparently barely out of childhood. And then there's the "wrongthinker" who single-handedly invented alembics, eyeglasses, the sport of hang-gliding, and the scientific method (less cheesily, he murmurs, mutters, or whispers about 1/3 of his thoughts. I thought about turning it into a drinking game, but even limiting it to "Amsel murmured", I'd have blacked out less than a third of the way in).
The world's cool once you get into it, cheesiness aside, and the multiple plots going are all interesting once they get going. Though it's annoying how much of the war plotline depends on everyone making wild assumptions and then reacting to them in the most exaggerated way imaginable. Even the voices of reason suddenly become willfully deaf when they're confronted with someone who they'd otherwise agree with. It's maddening. But outside of the level of individual decisions, even that plot alone was enough to keep me reading.
The characters are mostly pretty two-dimensional, with the possible exceptions of Hawkwind, Ceria, and Amsel, but (wild assumptions aside) not in a bad way. They're all pretty cool; I'd enjoy a book about Tamark's adventures alone, especially. And The Wayman's - though it's weird that he's never named, to the point where we "cut" away from conversations at the point where he'd have to introduce himself by name rather than profession. He's a minor character, but a relatively important one; two incredibly minor characters who did not even need their POV scenes do get names, even though they say maybe two sentences each. It's a little odd.
All in all Dragonworld is enjoyable, but it's pretty far from the best fantasy I've ever read and I don't think I'll read it again. Lots of people in the reviews here seem to be calling it epic. Perhaps I'm working from a different definition, but I don't think that fits, really. If it wasn't for the long discussions about the Simbalese crown, I'd go with "rollicking".
The world's cool once you get into it, cheesiness aside, and the multiple plots going are all interesting once they get going. Though it's annoying how much of the war plotline depends on everyone making wild assumptions and then reacting to them in the most exaggerated way imaginable. Even the voices of reason suddenly become willfully deaf when they're confronted with someone who they'd otherwise agree with. It's maddening. But outside of the level of individual decisions, even that plot alone was enough to keep me reading.
The characters are mostly pretty two-dimensional, with the possible exceptions of Hawkwind, Ceria, and Amsel, but (wild assumptions aside) not in a bad way. They're all pretty cool; I'd enjoy a book about Tamark's adventures alone, especially. And The Wayman's - though it's weird that he's never named, to the point where we "cut" away from conversations at the point where he'd have to introduce himself by name rather than profession. He's a minor character, but a relatively important one; two incredibly minor characters who did not even need their POV scenes do get names, even though they say maybe two sentences each. It's a little odd.
All in all Dragonworld is enjoyable, but it's pretty far from the best fantasy I've ever read and I don't think I'll read it again. Lots of people in the reviews here seem to be calling it epic. Perhaps I'm working from a different definition, but I don't think that fits, really. If it wasn't for the long discussions about the Simbalese crown, I'd go with "rollicking".