When You Don't Like a Book

In my review of David Drake's The Dragon Lord over at Black Gate, I go on at length about how I was enticed to read the book by a picture by Wayne Barlowe. That picture coupled with my positive memories of reading Drake in the past led me to have pretty high hopes for the book. Alack and alas, they were not fulfilled.
   There have been a few books I reviewed that I didn't really love, The Magic Goes Away springing instantly to mind. But I hadn't picked that one up with any sort of hopes for it. Niven's book was just another S&S novel to be checked off the great list of unread books carried around in my head.
Drake's book was something different. I knew its history of having started as the outline for a Cormac mac Art book so that was enticing. From his killer Vettius stories (and the killer novel Killer co-written with his friend Karl Edward freakin' Wagner), I knew Drake is a master of recreating ancient history. For these reasons alone I was hoping The Dragon Lord would be a good read.

Well, maybe I should rephrase that. It's not a terrible read, it's just that it doesn't ever gel as a novel, reading more like a bunch of ill-connected short stories. Each, especially the one about retrieving the Sword and Shield of Achilos, is good in its own way. It's a case of the sum being unequal to the parts.
Now that being said, I didn't just want to write a negative review (and no, I'm not one of those critics not writing negative reviews anymore). Negative reviews serve an important purpose, either as a corrective or a warning. But I don't want to be one of those critics given over to savage takedowns. The point of a review should be to explain why something hasn't succeeded or point out when it's egregiously awful, something The Dragon Lord is not.
On the other hand, the critic should also be ready to explain and laud the parts of a book that work. That there are good (very good) parts of The Dragon Lord and well worth a reader's time. Drake brings a laudable, workaday attitude to heroic fiction. There's a similarity to the equally unflashy Glen Cook to Drake's S&S which I find very satisfying. It may not be straight line, but there's definitely a line between Drake's fantasy stories and the more "realistic" fantasy being written now by the likes of Abercrombie and GRRM. I think my review presents adequately the failings of The Dragon Lord without neglecting its good parts.
 
Right now I'm reading a bunch of stuff. I'm starting Andre Norton's Year of the Unicorn today and Sunday I started Carole McDonnell's The Constant Tower. I'm also still reading the second of Max Allan Collins' Nolan books and I'm dipping into Harold Lamb's Swords from the West a story at a time. I haven't read like this since grad school. It's actually a little tough, but a good tough.

My music this week didn't switch over to heavier stuff from Britpop, just different British trad rock.  I watched an entire concert of Beady Eye, a band formed from the remnants of Oasis, filmed at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool. Not bad, even if they can't wrangle together a song like Noel Gallagher could. They've got a rock star swagger that most bands these days lack.

Then I dug out my Ocean Colour Scene albums. They're not as quadraphonic and technicolor as Oasis or spacey as Cast, but they're solid through and through. They've got a natural soulfulness and swing that meshes well with their very British-ness. I replayed "The Riverboat Song" from Moseley Shoals in the car today and its opening riff hit me the same way it did nearly fifteen years ago when I first heard it. Seeing them live in about thirteen years ago was great. Blistering on the heavy tracks and sweet on the soft ones. They ended the show with the Small Face's "Song of a Baker". It rarely gets more British or cooler than that.

Vettius and His Friends

   Finished off the very fun and sometimes excellent "Vettius and His Friends" the other night.  All the Vettius and Dama stories are good bits of sword swinging monster slaying fun.  I definitely wish Drake had written a full novel with the pair and taken the time to flesh them out and show us them in action for a long haul.
   Other stories included in the collection range from distant troll haunted Scandinavia to the crocodile infested banks of the Nile in ancient Egypt.  There's also the story "Killer" which was later expanded to a full length novel with the help of Karl Edward Wagner.  Unlike the story, the novel is explicitly science fiction.  Both are enjoyable.
   I've never been the biggest fan of Drake's novels but his short stories give me a quick, jarring bolt.  From his horror to his fantasy to his science fiction the man's got it down.

In the Mail

   Went to sunny Bermuda to visit old friends for the Thanksgiving week and came home to the following in the mail:

 

   I'm still waiting for this:

   I love Amazon.  Only ten years ago finding these books might have taken a summer of driving up and down the region and rooting through often badly organized stacks in often unpleasant used book stores.  Today, with the pushing of a few buttons they're at my home in splendid condition at reasonable prices within a a few days.  I'm just not sad about the passing of so many of the book traders and junk stores that my reading habit necessitated me frequenting.  And what with gas being what it is and the Staten Island to New Jersey bridge tolls being pushed up to $12 Amazon looks all the better.  Woo hoo!

Any comments, pro or con?

Romanorum Formidonis

  I went through a period of reading David Drake a lot.  That was more than twenty years ago and I think he's written a bazillion books since then.  None, based solely on a reading of the the back covers, have grabbed my attention.  There's only so much reading a man can get done and without personal recommendations from buddies it's one of the few ways to pick and choose what to spend time on.  (True story: A friend of mine used to buy anything with a D K Sweet cover but then he used to read about a book a day while commuting and in the eighties it sure seemed like D K Sweet painted the covers of almost every other science-fiction or fantasy book).
   But David Drake has recently come back into my line of vision and in a great way.  In pouring through articles, old anthologies and comments on Amazon I came across Drake's early fantasy stories set in the later Roman Empire under the Emperor Constantius.  I've got two under my belt and so far they're aces.

  The first story I read is "Dragon's Teeth" which saw light of day in a magazine called "Midnight Sun" that survived for four whole issues back in the seventies.  Edited by Gary Hoppenstand, it was the first publisher of several Karl Edward Wagner "Kane" stories, including the searing "Lynortis Reprise".  Scrolling through the contents for the four issues makes me think it was a pretty cool publication.
  "Dragon's Teeth" introduces us to the Roman legate Vettius as he is preparing to unleash an ambush against a column of Sarmatians.  Things go off well with death being meted out to the barbarian enemies of Rome until a giant makes an appearance.  Seeing it, Vettius realizes that "the horsehair crest wobbling in the waning sunlight increased the figure's titanic height, but even bare-headed the giant would have been half again as tall as the six-foot soldier."  And it's covered in bronze armor and helmet.  Armed with a giant mace.  Suddenly things don't look as optimal for the Romans.
   It's similar to one of those James Bond openings (in the good Connery movies) that throw you into the middle of things and get your blood roiling and serving as an appetizer to the rest of the story.  It pretty awesome that Drake springs a monster on us so quickly (remember, such awesomeness is one of the primary reasons that we read this stuff).
   In this short introductory bit of sword swinging, arrow flinging violence (five pages) there's a tremendous amount of quick historical detail.  Before the killing starts we're provided with a vivid description of the nomadic Sarmatians.  We also get a picture of Roman arms and armor versus that of their more barbaric opponents.

   The rest of the story concerns Vettius and his friend, Cappadocian merchant Dama, as they go of to find and deal with the progenitor of the giant and the nine others that successfully wiped out an equal number of Roman detachments.  Their quarry is Hydaspes, a sorcerer who has set himself up amongst the nomads.  By the end we get fierce barbarian nobles, creepy monkeys, dark wizards and man-on-giant hand to hand combat.  There's not too much more plot to "Dragon's Teeth" than that (though that little bit more is extra awesome).  It's the excitement and quick pacing with which Drake relays that plot that makes the story cook.

   The other Roman era story I read today was "The Mantichore" which features Dama in the pay of a a necromancer.  Chronologically it falls before "Dragon's Teeth" and it was first published in the inestimable "Swords Against Darkness" from 1977 and edited by the genre important (as editor and promoter more than writer) Andrew J. Offutt.
  Dama has been hired by the sorcerer Theophanes to bring him and his bodyguard cum manservant, the seven foot tall Hlodovech to a place of safety in the wake of a crackdown on pagans in Antioch by the emperor.  Dama finds and brings his customer to an abandoned inn at an oasis almost three weeks out into the desert out from Antioch.  There are found a mummified body and cryptic scrawls about the mantichore, the man-eating lion-bodied, man-headed and scorpion-tailed monster from Persian folklore.
   What happens next involves Theophanes' nercromancy, Hlodovech's origins, Dama's quick wits and the wisdom of following mysterious warnings.  Especially when they're found in places filled with magical power.  The story's short, quick and too the very ugly point.

  I like these stories a whole lot.  So much that I've already ordered the collection "Vettius and His Friends" from Amazon.  With luck it'll be with today's mail when I get home tonight.  Ahh, to hope.
  Part of the reason I enjoyed these stories was Drake's decision to avoid faux-archaic dialogue.  His characters speak in a reasonably modern vernacular.  When Vettius springs his ambush in "Dragon's Teeth" he yells, "Let's get 'em!".  Even Hydaspes avoids old-timey talk when he gives the obligatory madman monologue.
   And at the same time as his characters talk in a contemporary way Drake manages to convey the alien nature of life in the fourth century Roman Empire.  Vettius and his men have no compunction at slaughtering the women and children of the Sarmatians they attack in the ambush.  Pagans are hunted down by imperial inquisitors and there are barren empty spaces on the map between empires. For all the civilization of Rome and Byzantium it's one that's brutal and in a state of decline, under attack from barbarians without and moral and bureaucratic decay from within.
   So these are good stories and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.  On his own site, David Drake describes the stories as not his best but dear to his heart.  He also says one, "The Barrow Troll" comes close to being one of his best.  Can't wait.