You Should Read This: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

Dragons, dragons, dragons – so many writers have written about them in one form or another. Here’s ten books featuring dragons for fellow lovers of the form.

1. R.A. MacAvoy’s Tea With the Black Dragon (Kindle version) features urban fantasy and an ancient Buddhist dragon in search of spiritual teaching. Two of my favorite characters of all time occur in the form of the dragon and his teacher, Martha. There’s a sequel, Twisting the Rope (Kindle version) but it doesn’t quite live up to the magic of the first book.
2. James Maxey’s trilogy, Bitterwood (Kindle version), Dragonforge (Kindle version) and Dragonseed (Kindle version),. This unique take on dragons has characters engaging enough to make you want to follow them forever.
3. Tooth and Claw (Kindle version) by Jo Walton, is an awesome novel of manners featuring dragons. Smart and funny.
4. Naomi Novik has taken dragons and mashed them up with Horatio Hornblower in her Temeraire series: In His Majesty’s Service (Kindle version), His Majesty’s Dragon (Kindle version), Throne of Jade (Kindle version), Black Powder War (Kindle version), Empire of Ivory (Kindle version), Victory of Eagles (Kindle version), and Tongues of Serpents (Kindle version).
5. I first encountered Gordon R. Dickson’s The Dragon and the George (out of print and no Kindle version) in high school. This story of life from a dragon’s point of view is a solid fantasy read and one of the classics.
6. No list like this would be complete without Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, which feature not just dragons but miniature ones in the form of fire lizards. My favorite of the books remain the Harper Hall trilogy, Dragonsong (no Kindle version), Dragonsinger (no Kindle version), and Dragondrums (no Kindle version).
7. Another classic is J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit (Kindle version), in which the dragon Smaug plays a crucial role.
8. A stuffed dragon is one of the entrancing side characters of Charmed Life (only available in Kindle version) by Diane Wynne Jones. All of Jones’ Chrestomanci books (or anything by her, really) are worth picking up.
9. Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (no Kindle version) and The Dragons of Babel (Kindle version) feature gritty industrial dragons in one of the greatest fantasy settings of all time, full of danger and delight.
10. Last but certainly not least, many of us are looking forward to George R.R. Martin’s Dances with Dragons (no Kindle version listed yet).

I first encountered this series in the late 70s, while a teen, and it hooked me to the point where I’ll always note a Sheri S. Tepper book coming out, even though some have gotten a little didactic. But this series? Not only is it is awesome, but it interlocks with two other trilogies set in the same world and with many of the same characters.

While The True Game Trilogy starts in what seems to be a fantasy world, where different people manifest different Talents that play off each other in a massive societal game. Protagonist Peter is part of a school that teaches its students how to play the game, and part of the joy of the book is the detail with which the game is worked out:

“Talisman,” I blurted. “Talisman to King’s Blood Four.”

“Good.” Gervaise actually smiled. “Now, tell me why?”

“Because our side can’t see what pieces may be hiding behind the King. Because Talisman is an absorptive piece, that is, it will soak up the King’s play. Totem is reflective. Totem would splash it around, we’d maybe lost some pieces…”

“Exactly. Now, students, visualize if you please. We have King, most durable of the adamants, whose ‘blood,’ that is, essence, is red light.Demons, most powerful of the ephemera, whose essence is shadow. Tragamors making barriers at the sides of the Demesne. The player is a student, without power, so he plays Talisman, an absorptive piece of the lesser ephemera. Talisman is lost in play, ‘sacrificed’ as we say. THe player gains nothing by this,but neither does he lose much, for with this play the Demesne is changed, and the game moves elsewhere in the purlieu.”

Peter thinks himself Talent-less but when it does emerge, it leads to danger connected to the secrets around Peter’s birth.

The magic system is lovely, there’s two strong female characters in the form of Jillian and Mavin Manyshaped,ach of whom gets her own later trilogy (with its own version of earlier events), the characters are engaging and/or often disturbing, and the plot is nicely put together, slowly shifting over to reveal itself to actually be science fiction.

There are others of Tepper’s works that I’d recommend — I adore the Marianne series, for one, and I reread Grass on a regular basis, as well as The Gate to Women’s Country. But this series was my gateway to Tepper and as such it has a pull for me above all the rest. If you want to know more about Tepper hereself, here’s an interview she did with Neal Szpatura for Strange Horizons in 2008 and an interview with John Scalzi.

#sfwapro