Cute Dragons and...Conquistadors?
Review: Dragon Magic by Charles Townsend
Charles Townsend is a stage magician and loves writing books in which stage magicians save the day. Dragon Magic is no exception, although in this case the magician is more like the adult supervision. Heaven help us all.
Our protagonist is an assistant baker who gets caught up in a series of intrigue…and also ends up with a dragon egg.
The dragon is adorable.
This is pretty classic coming of age fantasy and perhaps a little too “Get the good king back” for some people’s tastes these days, but it is a fun story (even if all female nobles are apparently Princesses). The dragon is cute, the dog is cute, the dog lives…
If you just want a fun old school read, pick it up. It’s a quick read, too. And your kids might like it too.
Review: Conquist by Dirk Strasser
This is…interesting. It’s based on the stories of indigenous people coming up out of the ground. In this case, a group of conquistadors find their way through one of those holes and into another world, inhabited by strange people…in the tradition of the old pulps.
I’d actually call this neopulp, and my big problem with it is that it barely engages critically with the conquistadors. They’re bad people, but they’re…not that bad people. The priest is the only one who’s actually evil…
…and some of the inhabitants are, well. No, they aren’t all evil, but there’s a bit of an “evil race” here with an attempt at subversion that still comes over a little clumsy.
(And also I’m not sure about the numbers of soldiers in some of the battles…at all).
Which is a shame, because this is a well written book with an interesting storyline, it just needed a bit more maturity and nuance to be good.