Bones of the Dragon - Book Reviews

Written by: Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Hardcover: 416 pages

Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition edition (Jan 6 2009)

Language: English

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Bones of the Dragon

As the first in a planned series of fantasy books – Dragonships of Vindras – Bones of the Dragon does what any first book in a series does: lays down the ground work for the rest of the series. As a result, there’s a lot of explaining going on, with the really important points repeated throughout.

In fact, maybe there’s too much time spent trying to explain how things work in the Dragonships universe, where there’s three distinct “realms”: a place where the gods exist, the human plane, and the faery realm. Bones of the Dragon does a

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good job of informing the reader how these realms interact with one another and what the inhabitants of these realms think of one another. Of course, the story focuses primarily on the human perspective through the eyes of Viking-esque Skylan Ivorson, one of the most unlikeable protagonists I’ve ever come across. The guy is a dick, plain and simple. (Some have used “impetuous” rather than “dick” to describe him.)

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The fact he’s a dick is what drives the story forward. If he were a nice guy, the story wouldn’t go anywhere. His actions bring about all the bad things that happen to him and to his comrades – who are often summarily killed or turned into bunnies – that by the end of the book I was actually happy with the outcome (which I won’t give away here).

Because I don’t want to give away any of the major plot points of the story, I’ll use the publisher’s description of the book:

Skylan Ivorson is a sea-raider of the Vindras and eventually becomes the Chief of Chiefs of all Vindras clans, an honor he truly feels he deserves as one who has been blessed by Skoval, the god of war.

But sometimes a blessing is a curse in disguise.

Skoval and the other ancient gods are under siege from a new generation of gods who are challenging them for the powers of creation… and the only way to stop these brash interlopers lies within the mysterious and hidden Five Bones of the Vektan Dragons.

It will be up to the Vindras people, as the dragon-goddess’s champions, to undertake the quest to recover all Five. The fate of the Old Gods and the Vindras rests on their recovery--for this is not only a quest to save the world. It is also a quest for redemption.

Bones of the Dragon was co-authored by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman, both heavy hitters in the fantasy fiction genre, so the fantasy and plot elements of the story are put together very well – there’s never a point where I was lost as to what was going on and what motives might be in play – the descriptions are vivid (there’s a fight with some giants that is just awesome), and the few jokes that are included are amusing. It’s actually a very easy read, even though there’s a lot of bizarre sounding (and looking) names throughout, which is all the more impressive with the sheer number of characters that come and go during the course of this first story.

It does feel as though Weis and Hickman had to get this stuff out of the way as the pacing feels really fast or maybe just faster than the fantasy novels I’m more familiar with. But that’s a good thing. Though the characters brood on things occasionally, it never felt like it was dragging the plot to a standstill, the same way some of the best video games do.

I’d recommend Bones of the Dragon to fantasy fans and aficionados. It does concentrate on the mythology of the Dragonships so there’s a lot of setup involved, but now that it’s out of the way, the remainder of the series has all the makings of a very enjoyable experience even if Skylan is a dick.

- Aaron Simmer

(April 24, 2009)