To put together “The Book of Dragons,” an anthology of dragon stories published by Harper-Voyager, editor Jonathan Strahan tapped critically-acclaimed fantasy and science fiction writers who’ve been well-known for a long time like Garth Nix and Todd McCaffrey, stars like Daniel Abraham, Ken Liu and Aliette de Bodard, and authors who burst onto the scene only in recent years, like JY Yang and R.F. Kuang. Strahan explains what unifies the collection:
“Perhaps [dragons] reflect some aspect of ourselves back to us through story. They can be wise friends and counselors, devious enemies and fiery opponents, and pretty much everything in between….Dragons, it seems, have always been with us in story,...I could be convinced that dragons can be traced back to the first fires around which our distant ancestors gathered, inspired by dark places...and the reptiles that lived there…”
Unbound Writer Gemma Webster is More Learned Now in Dragon Myth
St George Slaying the Dragon (replica od Middle Age painting, c. 1420)
I definitely came to this collection a novice of dragon lore. I would not say that I am any kind of expert now, but I have certainly learned a lot. The introduction from Jonathan Strahan was very illuminating and provides a spoiler-free map for reading this collection. It’s a great place to start your dragon education. It was in this introduction I learned that dragons often appear in human form, that they love treasure, that they are guardians of every imaginable element particularly water (surprising to me given their fire-breathing proclivities), that they are sleeping below our towns and villages.
There’s so much to love in this book, it is really a treasure trove of dragon tales. Three stories really spoke to me, and in a way, I think they speak to each other. Which makes sense because they were all speaking to something I keep learning more about, and that is the devastation that colonization has brought, continues to bring, and if we don’t change course, will persist in bringing. I don’t think it is a spoiler to talk about the ways in which the dragons manifest in these stories since that is the premise of the collection, there will be dragons. I will try not to spoil the stories otherwise.
The first story is “Yuli” by Daniel Abraham who is notable in a myriad of forms as L.L.N Hanover, and James S.A. Corey (fans of The Expanse will recognize him in this form).
Yuli is a young grandfather raising a teenage son. He is also formerly a soldier in Russia’s war against Afghanistan turned mercenary in Afghanistan disrupting the heroine/opium trade. His only imprecation was not to cross the border into Iran and since this is a fairytale, he of course violates this oath, and this then is the source of his treasure hoard.
“Yuri still remembers seeing them: five three-ring binders with blue plastic covers and spines as wide as his hand. They had reminded him of medical records. When he picked one up, it felt too heavy. He remembers his first thought: the paper had gotten waterlogged. When he opened it, each page was a cardboard backing with a grid of clear plastic pockets four across and four high. A gold coin rested in each pocket: some were krugerrands, some American gold eagles. Each was an ounce of gold. Each sheet, a pound. Each binder, between fifteen and twenty pages deep. At the time, it was a little more than half a million dollars. Gold has gone up since then. Now the coins are worth nearer two million.”
Year of the Dragon, vijhayvick.blogspot.com
This story has two alternating points of view, Yuri and his grandson, who is running a Dungeons and Dragons game. The metaphoric dragon appears (though there’s just enough space to wonder if a physical dragon could manifest). I love the voices in this story. I love the violent warrior details. It did make me think of The Expanse, particularly the role Cas Anvar plays, Alex Kamal. There is something about the pacing of this story that brings Cas Anvar to mind. Although casting him in the role would alter the character particularly because this story does a good job of pointing out whiteness at the center of the colonizing drive. This version of the dragon is very focused on the masculine themes of the dragon, the violence, the strength, the greed, but also the protective drive, as well as the generational/inheritance/familial sense of the dragon. This is a really rich story that ends short. I’m hoping it is part of a larger work.
The next story I loved was “Where the River Turns to Concrete” by Brooke Bolander. This story features another human-embodied dragon, this time a water elemental. Joe is a big guy with amnesia who works for Raymond, a gangster land developer who won’t let anything get in the way of his greed. The writing in this piece is just so beautiful. This is how Bolander describes Joe’s new car, the Super Bee:
“She was the deep blue of the sky right after sunset and just before moon rise, a sapphire cut like a predatory animal. Like a river with jagged rocks just below the surface. You’d most likely die if you were stupid enough to jump in, but it might be worth it to get your skin wet. It reminded Joe of something. Something like—-
A homesick ache, gone gone and never the same
—an emotion he had forgotten. Want. Maybe it was the shape of the old muscle car. Maybe it was how no modern build held itself like that, ready to tear the road to pieces. He had opened the door with something approaching reverence and crammed himself inside while Raymond chuckled, just like he always did when Joe had to angle his limbs into a driver’s seat. He turned the key and the engine roared snowmelt and flash flood. It was like someone saying his name. His real name. The thought swirled by and was gone, inexplicable, a dead tree headed for the ocean.”
One thing I really loved about this story was how the masculine magic of the dragon was balanced by feminine forms of magic on several fronts, going into more detail on this topic feels like spoiler territory so I’ll just leave it as a tease. At its core, this story is about the perils of land pillaging and insatiable greed that earns its comeuppance.
The last story I want to love on is JY (Neon) Yang’s “The Exile.” This story starts on a spaceship with Linear bringing the dragon/god Yare hir daily offering of sweets and ashes as they travel to their new home on a currently uninhabitable planet. Yang’s writing is just so lovely.
“Water was a contradiction, both life and death at the same time. In their airtight suit, Linear waddled carefully into the temple’s fluid interior, past elaborate and porous columns of bone and metal, down the gilded silver steps, toward the whale-skull altar in the center of it all. Light flickered in the periphery of their vision: piscine ribbons of intent, prowling the edges of the temple. Yare was hungry and resentful as ever. Hir hatred permeated the water, sending prickles crawling up the skin on Linear’s arms.”
Linear is a priest who serves at Yare’s altar as part of a criminal sentence they are serving. Linear is facing a decade of exile in service to Yare as zie begins to make the planet ready for human inhabitants.
There’s no small part of me that wishes we lived in a world where dragons actually manifest with power and terrifying beauty. But if we could summon the elements of the dragon that live inside of us, the will to protect people, to care for our planet, to right the wrongs, maybe we could manifest a better world.
Lisa Mahoney Admired the Huge Variety in this Collection - There’s Something for Everyone
The stories and poems in this collection vary widely in terms of audience age, type of tale (fantasy, science fiction or blend), and different takes on the dragon legend based on culture. There are water-god dragons, gold-hoarding dragons, dragon-people, even gold painted dragons on the walls of Chinatown in San Francisco. Swimming dragons, flying dragons, dragons who protect foster homes, micro-sized and enormous dragons, and references to famous fictional dragons, like Ged’s Yevaud from The Wizard of Earthsea.
Then there’re the dragons of “Habitat” by K. J. Parker which “propagate by contamination, like a disease...brought there by veterans returning from Outremer. All it takes, so my friend told me, is a little scratch, from its teeth or even just the rough edge of one of its scales. If it draws blood, it infects you.” This story flips worn stories of medieval dragons vs knights on their head. Here the knight is an impoverished third son noble who learns the cost and utter futility of fighting foreign wars when lords on both sides have no problem sacrificing uncounted numbers of people of lesser ranks to hold an irrelevant border. The last thing this jaded vet survivor wants is to expose himself to danger to bring his prince the dragon he demands as a show-piece. But two thousand angels is a lot of money.
Gemma has already mentioned some of the grittier stories appropriate for adults, but others are appropriate for younger readers. “Lucky’s Dragon” by Kelly Barnhill is a science fiction story that celebrates the joy and power of science. When a schoolgirl creates a dragon in science class, she takes it next door to an elderly scientist who congratulates her but sets to investigating the growing beastie. The happy ending has a twist, and it is perfect for middle schoolers. The story asks if beings have souls if we do not name them, and if we can share our souls with others.
Also appropriate for middle schoolers is Garth Nix’s “Cut me Another Quill, Mr. Fitz” in which an ancient talking marionette and his knight assistant outsmart a greedy dragon disguised as a local ruler.
Anne Leckie, whose military space opera Ancillary Justice, achieved huge critical acclaim just before gender-neutral pronouns became common, wrote “We Continue” with Rachel Swirsky, and it haunted me. A kind of Tarzan retelling, here a human is raised in a hive of dragons that is in decline. His dragon mom loves him but cannot really communicate with him, and to push him out of the nest to save him, another human (the Jane-esque figure) is recruited. This is another story of scarce resources and the power of love to overcome racial (or even species-level) differences.
“The Exile” by JY Yang, which Gemma also liked, is a science fiction take, with the action taking place first on a ship headed out to a new world where a distinct alien crystalline lifeform plays a key role in awakening the dragon-god Yare to hir new role:
“I have spoken with them. I have understood them. The life on this planet, it has welcomed me. Our relationship without chains….I am their god now. I am the god of this planet, and I will act accordingly.”
“The Nine Curves River,” a fantasy by R.F. Kuang, introduces us to Eastern-style dragons which have more to do with water, mist and rains than with gold and greed. In a time of drought and dying crops, two sisters, one older and responsible, and one young and lovely but not ignorant, travel from their home island to explore the city. To bring rain, the dragon must be propitiated by a sacrifice, but this is really a story of sister love, with its powerful jealousy and guilt balanced by protectiveness. R.F. Kuang is a scholar of Chinese history, and I’ve reviewed her grimdark novels set in an alternate China where references to Japanese wartime cruelty and the British role in promoting opium addiction form the backdrop. This story is gentler on the surface than Kuang’s adult fantasy novels, but as in life, stories between siblings never end, and readers are not sure how things will come out, or if debts can ever be mended, but they do learn that sister love is a powerful force.
“Hikayat Sri Bujang, or The Tale of the Naga Sage” by Zen Cho is another tale of an eastern watery dragon with a strong family dynamic. The prince, like Shakuyamuni, gives up his position to retreat to a mountain top to meditate and escape from the bindings of this world. But as his father approaches death, unlike the Buddah, Sri Bujang must return home, face his guilt and the anger of his sister who has her own secrets, and decide whether to abandon his quest for nirvana in this life and hope for another chance in a future life. How can he be both ruler and sage for his transit brings damaging floods and rains?
As for horror, Aliette de Bodard’s “The Last Hunt” is a terrifying look at dragons who use enslaved humans like prey. We flesh-eating humans argue that we are at the pinnacle of the animal kingdom and can treat other beings as we wish, but this story asks if that reasoning holds when it is our species being hunted by more powerful beings who control all the weapons. Do we really think we know what animals, and slaves, can feel and think?
The collection is published by Harper-Collins and comes out on July 7, 2020. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
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