Scalzi, John: The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City
The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (2011)
Written by: John Scalzi
Art by: John Stanko
Genre: Short Story/Fantasy/Humor
Published by: Tor.com
Rating: Worth Reading, with Reservations
So, it's begun. Now that I'm voting for the 2012 Hugos, I want to make a good faith effort to read and/or experience as many of the nominees as possible. I decided to start with the short stories, because I knew all of the short stories were available for free online, and I wanted to get started now rather than wait for the packet. Short stories are also a great way to spend my breaks at work! At any rate, once I'd decided to start with short stories, I knew I had to start with Scalzi. One, because Scalzi's always an enjoyable read, and two, The Shadow War of the Night Dragons was an April Fool's Day joke, and I was intrigued that despite it being essentially a joke piece, it got nominated for a Hugo. Which is in a way awesome, but also kind of weird. So I wanted to get the weird out of the way.
The story itself, as I said, was an April Fool's Day joke. It was set up to be this big epic fantasy novel project that Scalzi was supposedly publishing through Tor, and that Tor was excerpting a prologue. And the very first sentence? Is the longest, most confusingly coherent first sentence I've ever read. It'll make your eyes cross, it's that intentionally bad. But once you get past that beast, the rest of the story is rather humorous. Light and relative modern in tone, and I found myself chuckling quite often.
Here's a nice sample of the tone and the humor:
“You don’t believe in night dragons?” Barnas asked, to Ruell, as lightning flashed once more.
“Of course I don’t,” Ruell said, around the thunder. “I may be a guard and a soldier, but I am not an uneducated man. I once spent three entire months in school. I am a man of science, and science tells us that an animal as large as a night dragon is meant to be simply cannot fly. If they can’t fly, they’re not dragons. Night dragons are a myth.”
“If it’s not night dragons, then how to you explain the attacks on the caravans and the city?” Barnas asked.
“As a man of science would,” Ruell said. “By suggesting sound and realistic alternatives to the fanciful suggestion that night dragons did these things.”
“Such as?” Quinto asked.
“Vampires and werewolves,” Ruell said. “Quite obviously.”
“Vampires and werewolves,” Quinto said.
“That’s right,” Ruell said.
“Have you ever seen a vampire? Or a werewolf?” Quinto asked. “Has anyone? Ever?”
“Of course no one’s seen them,” Ruell said. “They lurk.”
Mind you, this is humorous epic fantasy.
And then there's this abbreviated section that got me tickled:
There are many legends about the night dragons. […]
It is said that if you call the name of a night dragon at the exact instant of a full moon, it will come to you. If you then whisper a name into its ear, the dragon will then fly to the exact location of that person and eat them.
It is said that if you bathe in the blood of a night dragon, you will be invincible at caber tossing.
It is said that earthquakes are what happen when two night dragons love each other very much.
It is said that the most hated natural enemy of the night dragon is the lemur, which is a very bad deal for the lemur.
It is said that salt made from the dried tears of a night dragon will take fifty years off your life, so putting night dragon tear salt in the food a 49-year-old is not advised, unless you do not like them.
I'm not going to make any verdicts as to whether or not this story should win. For starters, I haven't read all of the nominated stories. The fact that it's nominated is pretty impressive, because it is humor, and humor tends not to be taken very seriously when it comes to "serious" awards. But the third section did a remarkable job of really capturing my interest -- there's actually the bones of a story there, and an intriguing one at that. Of course, that's where it ends too, leading me to want to say "No fair!" because I wanted to see what happened next.
The rating is for a few reasons: 1) it's humor, and it's also meant to be a parody of bad epic fantasy writing. That's not going to be everyone's taste, but if you enjoy Scalzi's blog or fiction, if you like his sense of humor, you're going to get a kick out of this. There are several chuckle-worthy moments. 2) The feeling of wanting more of the story when I finished makes me feel like it's not a complete story. Now, for a fake prologue to a fake story, that's perfect, because in a real book, you'd just turn the page to get more. Here, you can't: that's part of the April Fool's Day joke as well.
But that begs the question: does that in and of itself make it award-worthy? Should it win for being, essentially, a joke? Not that jokes are bad, and I quite enjoyed this one, but in its own way, this poor story has an uphill battle ahead of it. I've already seen some people state that they barely got past the first sentence before they dismissed it out of hand, stating it wasn't serious enough to be taken seriously. That's a little unfair, but hey, everyone has their own standards when it comes to Hugo voting. But whether or not you're voting for the Hugo, this is a fun piece, just so long as you know it's meant to be a parody. Once you get through that first, intentionally bad first sentence (it's a scarier beast that the dragons!), you'll be fine.
Scalzi's thoughts on the nomination are here and well-worth reading, especially if you're voting this year. So check them out!