Dragon’s Lure: Legends of a New Age – review

Dragons live among us, and have forever, and will forever live, if only in our imaginations. People around the world in countries near and far have incorporated dragons in their myths and folklore. Dragon’s Lure: Legends of a New Age is composed of 19 tales of wonder sure to please anyone who is a fan of the Fantasy genre in general or the dragon lover in your family in particular.  It is an excellent anthology of one sparkling gem of dragon lore after another, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jennifer Ross, and Jeffrey Lyman. If you don’t yet feel the lure of the dragon, you will after you get this book, and you will be hooked for life.

I won’t go into every story in this collection, but just touch on a few of the stories that stood out for me. It would take up to much space and time to do each one justice, but they all are pretty good, and I didn’t find a clunker amongst them.

The anthology begins with a tale about miniature dragons, who have invaded a house and have made pests of themselves, in a short story by John Grant titled “Baited Breath.”  Grant has received two Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and many more.  I found his contribution to this collection an interesting and fun read because of the matter-of-fact way the married couple in it act when they learn that their house is not infested with mice or rats, but with small dragons. Also, their attempts to deal with their unwelcome house guests are pretty funny, as are the narrator’s (the husband’s) ideas about what to bait the traps with. For some reason, the varmints turned up their noses at the box of Cheerios in the cabinet, but they seem to like almost everything else, especially the sherry the narrator puts out for a laugh.

Another of the short stories I thought was cool was “Weathermaker” by Vonnie Winslow Crist. I hadn’t read anything by her before this story, but I intend to now, if the other stuff she’s written is at all as good as “Weathermaker.” It’s about a Chinese dragon–one of my favorite kinds of dragons to read about, as the Chinese and Japanese hold a reverence for dragons and in general don’t consider them to be evil, as some people in the West believe them to be. May Chang wants to continue the tradition of taking care of a dragon that her elderly grandfather has paid honor and tribute to, and she desires to ask the dragon for assistance ending the dry spell the land has been under for a long time. She finds her grandfather’s leather-bound book written in Chinese by hand, on dragons, but only some of it has been translated by Papa Chang into English, the language that May speaks. Fortunately for her, one of the things her grandfather translated is called “The Water Supplication.”  When May goes down to the pond where the dragon named Lung lives, and takes with her milk for it, she is surprised by her supplication producing results. At first, she is scared of the dragon’s appearance, but she likes hearing the stories he tells her, and she is ashamed to learn that the leather that binds her grandfather’s book is made from a young female dragon that Lung had known. One of her ancestors killed the young dragon, which, at that stage in its life-cycle, looked more like a snake than a dragon. This is a touching tale, and I enjoyed reading about the love that develops between May and the dragon.

I’ll mention a little bit about two more of the stories, just to give you more of an idea about the scope and diversity of tales contained in this fascinating collection. Danielle Ackley-McPhail’s offering is titled “Emberling.” In it, the young woman Cami tries to carry on the duty of the Celdraigs, mortals who know some magic like rune casting and who are charged with serving and caring for the dragons and their babies, called emberlings. She is the last of her kind, and she learns that the dragon is, too, in its moving account of dragon history.  There is still some hope that as yet undiscovered emberlings buried in the earth will hatch and eventually become dragons. Sadly, Man would often remove the unhatched emberlings from the earth, digging them up in their greed for treasure. As the dragon tells Cami: “In their taking, they uncradled the emberlings nestled in the earth, confusing them for common gemstones.”

The last short story I’ll mention is the one by David B. Coe that concludes the anthology, called “The Dragon Muse.” Coe is a very accomplished author, and his first trilogy, The LonTobyn Chronicle, received the Crawford Fantasy Award for the best work by a new author in fantasy. He also wrote the novelization for the movie Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe.  “The Dragon Muse,” is a humorous, fun tale that reminded me of the writing of one of my favorite authors, Harlan Ellison. A famous author has a writing block, and goes to a store that specializes in selling supplies to writers like expensive fountain pens and organic inks. It also sells various living creatures, like miniature griffins, or a tiny gnome-like man smoking a pipe, or a dragon, as muses for authors to inspire and motivate them. The author purchases the small dragon he sees there, despite being warned that there is a potential danger to his purchase. The dragon will indeed inspire him, and motivate him to finish his novel. The catch is, if the dragon beats him to attaining its full growth before the man finishes his novel, the dragon gets to eat him. And, the man discovers to his chagrin, the dragon grows incredibly quickly.

Dragon’s Lure: Legends of a New Age is a marvelous collection of stories about dragons that I highly recommend. I am glad that I made it a part of my personal library, and I hope that you enjoy reading it, also. It’s got tales about all sorts of kinds of dragons in it, and I liked that each story seemed to have a different take on the theme, to give the reader an idea about the quality and range of tales being written by some of today’s most talented Fantasy authors through their takes on dragons. Give it as a gift to someone you know who is a lover of stories about dragons or is a fan of the Fantasy genre, or buy it for yourself as a treat!