Book #07 - Dragon Wing (Death Gate Cycle #1) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Dragon Wing (Death Gate Cycle #1) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
The first book in an old and long series that landed in my lap a while ago, and it has Dragon in the title, so I thought I'd check it out.
It's relatively "high" fantasy in that there are elves and dwarves, and magic. The worldbuilding is pretty cool, and it's probably what's going to make me read the next one as well, even though it looks like they're not all very closely connected and don't feature the same characters.
This one is about Bane, child of an evil sorcerer who wants to take over the world, and some other characters who get drawn into that plot - a human, a dwarf, a magician, another magician, and a dog. It wasn't mind-blowing, in fact it was aggravatingly conservative sometimes, but it was a fun read.
* The main attraction to me is in fact the worldbuilding, and it stayed that throughout the whole book. The world has been shattered into separate realms, and the one the first book is set in is the Realm of the Sky - lots of flying islands rotating in complicated orbits, with ships flying between them. That idea alone is so unusual that it completely sold me on the book.
* The first character introduced is Hugh the Hand, a human who is supposed to assassinate Bane. But Bane can wield powerful magic, which makes everyone want to protect him instead. This leads to excellently unreliable pov from Hugh. He keeps wanting to kill Bane, but then every time, decides... not to. I loved the unreliable narration a lot.
* The other characters are sadly less interesting, and set up in a way that did not make me empathize with them much - they're all much too tropey. And the characterization feels... a little racist.
* There's Limbeck the Geg (i.e. dwarf), and *of course* people who are short and round exist to be made fun of. Both him and his girlfriend Jarre are repeatedly described in humorous tones, which just made me want to hurl. That Jarre seems to be the sensible one in the relationship only makes it marginally better.
* There's Alfred, the secret survivor of a dead race of magicians, who is so deep undercover he can't even coordinate his body. Most of his scenes consist of him tripping, falling, or fainting. He's been made fun of so many times by the time his reveal comes around, it's really hard to suddenly empathize with him. (So I didn't.)
* There's the evil wizard, who of course is bald, and just ... evil for the fun of it? He keeps repeating that he's evil, it must be true.
* His son Bane isn't really taken seriously, either, but then that could be because he's so immature I refused to take him seriously, not that that's a flaw in his characterization.
* Then there's Haplo, the other survivor of another dead race of magicians. Okay, he's a well fleshed-out character, actually. Not very easy to empathize with, but he has the backstory to explain it, and he drives a good part of the plot, so that helps. And he has a dog who he can somehow magically interact with. I liked that, too.
* Then there are some elves, but none of them are described in much detail. We get to know something of their society, but no individual characters.
* The only other female character (besides Jarre) is Bane's mother Iridal, and she's even worse of a cliché. But since she only had such a minor role, I didn't mind all that much.
* I did mind that all the societies we see described are firmly male-dominated. All the female characters appear as queens (i.e. partners of the lead). Maybe it's because the series is already thirty years old... but it's not like it predates feminism. In any case, I didn't hold it to a very high standard. That said, it's just the setup that's very conservative, not the characters themselves. Jarre in particular is more independent and powerful and has more agency than the societal setup suggested.
* That's it. A bunch of relatively sterotypical characters stumble through a very well thought-out (if patriarchic) world.
* After all that ranting, I have to mention the epilogue, which is twenty pages of digression/backstory about how the magic in that world works. With pictures. Worldbuilding really is the authors' specialty. :D
* Oh, and about the dragons: the title of the book is the name of Hugh's ship - a dragon ship - so not an actual dragon. There are dragons, though, because they're used to fly between the islands as well - just like the ships. They're fierce and can only be coerced into serving as transport animals by their pilots' magic. Okay, good enough, that counts. And the ships themselves are interesting, too.
* All in all: I didn't hate it, it was in fact very gripping in parts.
3 stars - great worldbuilding, not-so-great character building
This was the last book I read this year, which means I'll miss my goal of 12 books just like last year. Lets put all our bets on next year, shall we? ;)
1 - * stars - private novel draft
2 - 4 stars - All the Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders [DW link & LJ link]
3 - todo
4 - 3 stars - Whispers Underground (The Rivers of London #3) by Ben Aaronovitch [DW link & LJ link]
5 - 5 stars - Chimes at Midnight (Toby Daye #7) by Seanan McGuire [DW link & LJ link]
6 - 1 star - Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota #1) by Ada Palmer [DW link & LJ link]
7 - 3 stars - Dragon Wing (Death Gate Cycle #1) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman [DW link & LJ link]
x-posted from dw (comments:
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