Customer Reviews

The Dragons of the Cuyahoga

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This story was a very enjoyable read, the premise of Cleveland being blanketed by a magical portal and having to cope with the affects of this was an interesting method of introducing magic in to the urban setting of Cleveland. A reporter sent to look into the death of a dragon quickly discovers there are dark plots at work behind the dragon's death--and quickly winds up in over his head. There are some unexpected twists and turns, startling betrayals and underhanded motives at play. If you enjoyed Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books, this story will probably appeal. Melisa Michaels' paranormal mysteries dealing with a female detective duo and elven invegstigations are fairly similar in style. There is more focus on the unfolding events and the mystery itself than on the more emotional or romantic elements that some other urban fantasies contain. Those looking for a strongly magical plot may be disappointed. The author's use of fantasy is fairly matter-of-fact and more like his SF roots. I did feel there were a few plot threads left hanging--but it was all in all a good read. It has the earmarks of a possible series, and I wouldn't be surprised to see our reporter hero back again.

S. Andrew Swann has written a number of good novels. Most of his books are science fiction, but he has also written horror novels under the name S. A. Swiniarski and a science fiction novel and a "mainstream" novel under the name of Steven Krane. I recommend nearly all of his books.

The Dragons of the Cuyahoga is his second fantasy novel, and I think it is a good deal better than his first one, God's Dice (the only one of his books I was disappointed with). I had a lot of fun reading this one; part of the charm is that Mr. Swann can take fantasy elements and treat them with the same matter-of-fact and logical consistency as science fiction elements. He also used this talent to good effect in his first vampire novel, Raven (written under the S. A. Swiniarski name). Another thing I liked was that the motivations of the "supernatural" characters, rather than being cloaked in mysticism, are understandable and logical from the reader's point of view -- such as why dragons like gold so much.

The only fault I can find is a trivial one: if you are at all knowledgeable about firearms, you may find Mr. Swann's mistakes about them distracting. Don't let that distract you; The Dragons of the Cuyahoga is a good read.

Swann's off-the-wall crazy mixture of the mundane world with worlds too strange to view unafraid reminded me of the finest classic Philip Jose Farmer. Swann moves from the fallen, jaded world of a Great Lakes city to a world forever changed by the invasion of magic. A dragon dies -- spectacularly! I loved all the magical creatures, but my favorite was the dragon keeping careful track of her stock market investments. And the fate of a certain lap-top computer tickled me -- maybe because of my ambivalence toward that particular techno-magic in our own world.

To complement to his crazy critters and engagingly cynical but vulnerable hero, Swann is an expert at keeping the plot galloping. I read the novel in one giant gulp and looked around hoping for more.

So, the plot of this book is a pretty standard mystery story: Reporter covers accidental death and falls into massive political conspiracies. The characterization was fairly good, though some characters seemed to be little more that place-holders (the Irish cop, the beautiful elven woman). But my major issue with the book was in the details. The author clearly didn't actually do ANY research into firearms, computers or electronics, all of which play a major role in the novel and all of which are badly mis-used. In almost every important scene, the purported details of these three is so far from the reality that it broke my suspension of disbelief.

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this book. But it is one I will not re-read very much (if ever). It is just a little lacking. But a good one time read.

The Dragons of the Cuyahoga is the first book by S. Andrew Swann featuring newspaper reporter Kline Maxwell, who usually covers the political beat in Cleveland, OH, never the "fuzzy gnome" stories. What are the "fuzzy gnome" stories? Well, the main premise behind this book and the sequel is that a Portal has opened up in Cleveland and elves, dragons, mages, gnomes, and every other assorted fantasyland creature have tumbled through an inhabited the area around Cleveland. They're limited in how far they can roam by the magical field that surrounds the Portal, but it's still a significant amount of area.

I picked the book up because of the premise, but I went into the book with some doubts. It's very difficult to integrate magic into the real world believable, but I think S. Andrew Swann has done it. There are limits on the magic and the way it is described and how it is used is interesting. There has been a lot of thought put into how something like the Portal would fit into our world, not just the mechanics of it and how it works, but also how it would affect politics and government and such.

The book has two great strengths, and that's one of them. The second is that the elves and dragons and such aren't just humans with funny ears or wings. S. Andrew Swann had gone the extra mile and made them all THINK differently.

The story begins when Kline is assigned to the "fuzzy gnome" story of a dragon that crash lands in the Cuyahoga. Except after a while it becomes obvious that it wasn't an accident, but murder. Most of the outcome of the story revolves around the fact that the fantasyland creatures think differently and that Kline has to adjust his own thinking in order to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together so that they make sense. He keeps assigning human motivations and motivators to the elves and dragons and such, and he has to kick that habit in order to get the mystery of the dragon's death solved. This idea--that the fantasy creatures don't think the same as we do--is something that should be integrated into fantasy novels more, but it's hard to pull off, mostly because it's hard for us (the human author and human reader) to wrap our head around how someone so completely different will think so completely different. In the end, though, you can follow how S. Andrew Swann's creatures think and who killed the dragon and why--and why those who help Kline, help him, and those who don't, don't.

There are some drawbacks to the novel. I'm not sure what happened, but this book appears to have skipped the last page proof phase. There are alot of typos and sentences gone wrong and such. I don't usually mind some throughout my books, because as a writer I know that it's nearly impossible to find them all, even when three or four people go through the book specifically looking for them. But the number that appear in this book is insane and it got annoying. There was also a few sections of the book where I thought the worldbuilding detail of how the Portal was integrated into Cleveland was a little too much. This happened most often when the author spent a page or two explaining the "history" of a particular section of Cleveland--how such-and-such area went from new-wealth to a slum housing the lesser classes of fantasyland creatures, for example. I don't mind a paragraph on this, but when it went on for a few pages . . .

In the end, though, I thought it was a cool idea and I really liked the way the mystery resolved itself, since it was based on how everyone thought and that not everything had the same goals as, say, humans would have. I'll certainly go on to read the sequel, The Dwarves of Whiskey Island. In fact, I've already started it. *grin*

PS--These two books can now be found in an omnibus volume called Dragons and Dwarves: Novels of the Cleveland Portal.

This is a world where ten years previously a portal opened in Cleveland, Ohio. Now magic works in the city and creatures of myth are around. Kline Maxwell is a political reporter in a city where television does not work well. When a dragon falls dead from the sky Kline is assigned to the story even though it is not a political story. Kline begins and soon finds himself involved in far more than he bargained for.

Kline finds himself caught up in City and Federal investigations as he digs deeper into the story. Did the dragon die by accident or was murder involved? Kline uses his investigative skills and contacts to get to the heart of the matter and keep alive.

Twists and turns abound in this hard-boiled detective story. S. Andrew Swann has done an excellent job of combining magic and classic detective styles. The author never uses magic as a cheap out. Instead, the story holds together like the best of thrillers and mysteries. But there are enough spells, elves, dragons and whatnot to please any fantasy fan. Check it out.

Kline Maxwell is a reporter on the Cleveland press, in a Cleveland that is home to the Portal, magic and all the strange inhabitants from the other side who have immigrated to Earth since it opened.

When a Dragon suddenly drops out of the sky Kline's investigation - despite his dislike of "fuzzy gnome" stories - leads him to believe he is dealing with a murder and a layer of politics he never uncovered when solely concentrating on the human element of Town Hall.

This is a decent mystery story, clearly written with likeable characters that makes me want to read book 2 in this series, THE DWARVES OF WHISKEY ISLAND.

S. Andrew Swann brings a fresh voice to the fantasy genre with this novel and his no-nonsense protagonist, reporter Kline Maxwell. The Dashiel Hammett-like noir setting pervades throught the story and makes for a very enjoyable read. There are lots of lines like "(s)he had one of those personalities that tore into a room like a rototiller into a vat of Jell-O." They may be a bit hokey, but fun to read none-the-less.

One quibble is that the author misuses "irony" or "ironic" no less than a dozen times. This seems to be a plague on contemporary authors that really needs to be squashed.

It's a mystery with any real conclusions. It moves from accusations of one group to accusations of another. The conclusion of the book is not supported by any facts in the story. It was merely conclusions that could have been taken any number of ways.

The authors writing left something to be desired. The use of big words added nothing to the story and did nothing but slow me down. It was as if the author was trying to show off his intelligence.

The use of profanity was unnecessary. The use of profanity by characters added nothing to the character development. There was no point to having it in the book.

Finally the book has very little to do with dragons. The first dragon dies in the prologue and the only other dragon in the story adds nothing to the story line. The title of the book is misleading.