Book Review
Mar. 14th, 2004 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Dragon of Despair, by Jane Lindskold
This book is the third in a series of fantasy novels. The books are connected, but the plots are self-contained (i.e., this is not one continuous story spread out over several books). Firekeeper, one of the two principal protagonists, is a feral child raised by wolves and recently reintroduced into human society. The other main character, Derian Carter, is Firekeeper's first and best friends in the human world. The plot is, at its root, fairly routine fantasy: a group of adventurous types must go on a mission into not-completely-friendly territory to prevent a terrible magical thing from happening. But I'm not going to describe the plot any farther than that here, because that's not what's interesting about these books and why I read past the first one.
The interesting thing about this book (and the previous two) is the mix of adventure and political intrigue. In a lot of ways, this book is kind of like a "beginner's" (referrring to the reader) political intrigue novel. Because of Firekeeper's background, she sort of acts as an interpreter for the reader. Since she was raised by pack animals, she actually has a surprisingly good grasp of social and political hierarchies and people's places within them. However, since she was not raised among humans, she also has an outsider's viewpoint and doesn't always understand the particulars of how human society and hierarchies work at first. This is in fact, the most clever aspect of the book.
Otherwise, The Dragon of Despair and its two predecessors (Through Wolf's Eyes and Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart) are reasonably good, but not great. The plots and characters, while not completely hackneyed, are also not wildly original. If you've read a decent amount of fantasy, this will all be familiar ground. The writing itself is also good not great - it does its job well, but that's it. These books are reasonably good, diverting reads - nothing more, nothing less.
This book is the third in a series of fantasy novels. The books are connected, but the plots are self-contained (i.e., this is not one continuous story spread out over several books). Firekeeper, one of the two principal protagonists, is a feral child raised by wolves and recently reintroduced into human society. The other main character, Derian Carter, is Firekeeper's first and best friends in the human world. The plot is, at its root, fairly routine fantasy: a group of adventurous types must go on a mission into not-completely-friendly territory to prevent a terrible magical thing from happening. But I'm not going to describe the plot any farther than that here, because that's not what's interesting about these books and why I read past the first one.
The interesting thing about this book (and the previous two) is the mix of adventure and political intrigue. In a lot of ways, this book is kind of like a "beginner's" (referrring to the reader) political intrigue novel. Because of Firekeeper's background, she sort of acts as an interpreter for the reader. Since she was raised by pack animals, she actually has a surprisingly good grasp of social and political hierarchies and people's places within them. However, since she was not raised among humans, she also has an outsider's viewpoint and doesn't always understand the particulars of how human society and hierarchies work at first. This is in fact, the most clever aspect of the book.
Otherwise, The Dragon of Despair and its two predecessors (Through Wolf's Eyes and Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart) are reasonably good, but not great. The plots and characters, while not completely hackneyed, are also not wildly original. If you've read a decent amount of fantasy, this will all be familiar ground. The writing itself is also good not great - it does its job well, but that's it. These books are reasonably good, diverting reads - nothing more, nothing less.
