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Lädt ... The Dragon Quintet (2006. Auflage)von Orson Scott Card (Autor), Marvin Kaye (Herausgeber)
Werk-InformationenThe Dragon Quintet von Marvin Kaye (Editor)
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Gehört zu VerlagsreihenScience Fiction Book Club (37118)
An abiding presence in myth and literature from around the world, the dragon has been reborn in modern fantasy fiction. The classic winged fire-breathing reptiles often associated with evil (they do despoil villages and demand virgin sacrifices, after all) tend nowadays to be more kindly disposed to humanity, sometimes aloofly offering magical wisdom, sometimes actively involving themselves in human lives, whether as a servant or friend. In this volume, originally compiled exclusively for the members of the Science Fiction Book Club and not available in stores, editor Marvin Kaye has skillfully gathered brand-new contributions to the hoard of dragon lore by five top fantasy authors. Orson Scott Card -- an expert at writing from a child's point of view, as evidenced in his bestselling Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow -- offers a gothic yarn set in contemporary suburbia. "In the Dragon's House" tells about the mysterious dragon that lives in the wiring of an old house, palpable only to a young boy who in dreams shares its body and feels its true size and power. But what does it really want? Mercedes Lackey, prolific author of the Valdemar saga, writes of a slave boy who is chosen to care for a warrior's dragon. Vetch (and the reader) will learn much about dragon behavior ... and this special dragon's secrets may be the key to his freedom. (Lackey was so taken by young Vetch that she expanded his adventures into a full-length novel with the same name as this novella -- "Joust.") Tanith Lee is no stranger to dragons, which appear quite often in her award-winning fantasies. The fable "Love in a Time of Dragons" is imbued with her signature atmosphere -- Old World, moody, erotic -- as a kitchen maid goes a-questing with a handsome champion to slay the local drakkor. But the tale takes a surprising twist ... Elizabeth Moon, author of the popular Esmay Suiza and Heris Serrano series, takes a break from military science fiction to give us the tale of a young man forced by lies to flee his village ... into an adventure of dwarfs and dragon-spawn, of trust and wisdom, and, ultimately, "Judgment." Rounding off the collection is Michael Swanwick's "King Dragon," a strange amalgam of twentieth-century technology and faery magic, in which the award-winning author invokes a truly sinister and repellent creature -- a being with the soul of a beast and the body of a machine -- part metal, part devil ... all merciless. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.0876608374Literature English (North America) American fiction By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Fantasy Collections Themes and subjects Myths, legends and the supernaturalKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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The most straightforward of them, and the one I liked the best, was Mercedes Lackey’s “Joust” which was about dragon-riding warriors in a desert kingdom reminiscent of ancient Egypt. Vetch, a downtrodden slave boy, is taken by one of them to be his apprentice dragon-keeper, and the story is about how Vetch adjusts to his new surroundings and what happens when he steals a dragon egg and raises it as his own. The worldbuilding was excellently done for such a short piece, as was Vetch’s helpless anger from his father’s murder that he can’t let go of even when his situation improves. Being a Lackey story, it was schmaltzy and repetitive in places, but enjoyable to read in spite of that. It inspired a later series of novels, but I can take Lackey only in small doses and will probably pass on them. (When I first read this story I swore it was by Andre Norton, and only when I started to write this review did I realize the author was different.)
Michael Swanwick’s “King Dragon” handled the same subject matter, a relationship between a dragon and a boy, but his worldbuilding made absolutely no sense. Somehow the folksy Discworld realm of village fantasy mated with the world of high technology, resulting in sentient metal dragons with jet engines and cockpits, along with elves and spells and curses. One of these dragon jets crash lands in a rural area and forces the villagers to serve it, kidnapping a local teenage boy to be its mouthpiece. This was one of the annoying stories because, as I said, the world made no freakin’ sense, and it actually hurt my opinion of Swanwick whom I understood to be a fine writer.
The other annoying story was Elizabeth Moon’s “Judgment” which, again, had a dragon and a young male protagonist in a rural English village setting, with some witch-hunting thrown in. This story was frustrating because the male protagonist was so stupid and so thick-headed he never saw what was obvious to the reader from Day One. Again, I don’t think I’ll read any of Moon’s other work either.
Orson Scott Card did a much better job with “In the Dragon’s House ” in which he sets up a family mystery in an old house with a model train setup in the attic, decaying electrical wiring, and a matriarch who puts on community theatrical productions in the basement, all of which were way more interesting than the… yes, you called it… young male protagonist and the dragon, who is formed from living electrons. This story ended on an abrupt downbeat note more suited to horror than whimsy, which I had classed the story as; still, up to that point it was a good read, even if it wanted to be start of a longer, more complete tale.
Tanith Lee’s “Love in a Time of Dragons” began as a trope: a dragon slaying knight in some Medieval European never-never land appears at a village inn where he is seduced by one of the wenches, who asks that he take her with him on his journey up the mountain where the dragon lairs. Halfway through, the plot takes an unexpected twist, which is par for the course for a Tanith Lee story (and also, par for the course, one the reader would never see coming) and the rest of the story consists of the heroine’s immersion in the dragons’ world, including some sexual escapades with teeth and tongues, until she loses her sense of humanity. It was interesting, but not among Lee’s best.
(On reflection, it’s odd that the only story with a female protagonist had her having tons of sex with both the knight and the dragon.) ( )