Recently I read this new series of books from Mercedes Lackey about dragons and the people who fly them. I love dragons, any book where they are portrayed well is a good book, but I would almost say these books are great. (If you read them and hate them I cannot be held liable in court.) The first book, Joust, seems a little forced and after I had finished I found out why: it was originally a 50 odd page short story and the author then liked it so much she had to turn it into a whole book. It gets better about page 75 and speeds up nicely towards the end, if you read it only to get to Alta, it is worth it.
Alta is better, though I can't say much without giving the story away. It fails in two places: the first when it falls into Harry Potter-esque story line for about 10-15 pages early in the book and the second in having too many characters and not enough time to get to know them. By the end of the book you know the characters pretty well, but after spending so much time meeting the primary character in Joust, Vtech/Kiron, you spent almost none getting to know his friends.
A dragon is the national symbol of Wales and it is one of my favorite mythical creatures. I once sat in a church where the preacher claimed that 'anyone who likes dragons is worshipping Satan'. While I do see a lot of satanic shops selling dragons I would like to point out that it hardly makes the animal itself suspect. I swear, if Satanists cooped the Bible and claimed it was their book for no good reason Christians would denounce it. Ok, maybe that's a bit extreme...
But also consider the unicorn. For some reason nobody thinks it's odd that an animal with a phalic symbol stuck on it's forehead and who is only attracted to (presumably) young virgins is bad. I mean what unicorn out there is a virgin? Probably none of them... (though maybe this explains why there are none around) and then they go off luring young virgins into the deep dark woods to find them. But they aren't up to anything.... sure.
That is my review of the month. If you don't like Sci-Fi or dragons (you sinner) or books - I wouldn't read it. However, if you like all three you might want to pick it up, read the back and see if you like what you read. (Admittedly, the covers are a bit cheesy.)
Anybody else want to brag about recent reads?
Posted by 10lees at March 16, 2005 07:37 PM