DRAGON'S WINTER
by Elizabeth A. Lynn
Macmillan, £16.99, ISBN 0-333-72372-4
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Few twins could turn out more unalike than the sons of the mighty Dragon Lord. Only one of them, Karadur, is a 'changeling' having inherited his father's gift of changing from human to dragon shape at will. This advantage fills the younger, Tenjio, with hatred and resentment, till it becomes his life's ambition to suppress, even steal, his elder brother's power. With this in mind, he flees the realm, determined to master the darkest secrets of sorcery.
As an unimaginable evil is unleashed, ever greater resources of faith and magic will be required against the advancing chill conjured up by the vile creator of the black castle and all its attendant horrors. |
REVIEW (from Kimota #8)
The story of Dragon’s Winter charts the deadly rivalry of the twin sons of Kojiro Atani, the Dragon Lord of Ippa in classic heroic fantasy style. The elder son, Karadur, has inherited his father’s power to assume, with the aid of a talisman, the form of a dragon. The younger, Tenjiro, has a talent for sorcery but is bitterly resentful of his brother. At the opening of the story Kojiro Atani is dead and Karadur is Dragon Lord, though he has not yet transformed into dragon form. His brother, Tenjiro, returns from an exile where he has learned powerful magic, steals Karadur’s talisman and flees into the north. There, possessed by the malevolent spirit of an ancient mage, he constructs by sorcery a grim fortress and assaults his brother’s realm with creatures of darkness and bitter cold. So the scene is set for an epic struggle.
It all sounds promising but unfortunately it does not deliver on the promise. An example: Elizabeth Lynn has gone to a lot of trouble to name many locations in her imaginary world yet there is no map anywhere in the book. Ultimately this is a minor niggle but it is, in my view, illustrative of how what could have been a very good book has been rendered mediocre by inattention to detail. The plot and setting are strong enough but none of the characters are developed to the point where I cared about what became of them. The one promising character got killed off before halfway just as he was getting interesting. Even Karadur, despite being the first gay epic fantasy hero I’m aware of, is flat and uninteresting. The final confrontation between the brothers is considerably less then epic and the book carries on beyond the obvious endpoint to somewhat artificially set up a sequel. Elizabeth Lynn won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1980 for Watchtower so she really ought to know better. So should her editor at MacMillan who should have returned the manuscript with a note saying ‘promising first draft’, I look forward to seeing it when it has been properly fleshed out.
Martin Owton
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