Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate [Hardcover]

Kenneth Che-Tew Eng (Designer)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2005

Rifts in time during the Middle Ages allow humans to summon powerful prehistoric beasts and future technologies in this fantastic novel about the influence of perception on reality and the role of political power on the conversion of knowledge into ideology. Under the auspices of the hominids, dragon king Drekkenoth has attempted to use knowledge to corrupt the minds of all the dragons in his kingdom but is stymied by the existence of a single source of uncorrupt knowledge: a tome of omniscience known as the Lexicon. Dennagon, a lowly dragon sentry, takes it upon himself to discover this lexicon, an act that leads to his expulsion from the mainstream world of worms and humans and the creation of a band of dissident dragons who wage war on the corruption of Drekkenoth and his human masters. During his seemingly endless quest to find the Lexicon, battles with cyborg technodragons and bewildering encounters with the enigmatic forces of time provide Dennagon with insight into the ephemerality of omniscience and the instability of the temporal as he discovers that there is more to life than the lore he has so desperately been searching for.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dive gleefully into this book and take your time."  —Jonja.net

About the Author

Kenneth Che-Tew Eng is a screenplay writer, novelist, and the author of The 0th Dimension. He lives in Bayside, New York.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Dna Press (April 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097487650X
• ISBN-13: 978-0974876504
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,723,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Self-Published Trash, March 7, 2007

By 

Ryan Thompson "Knight" (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate (Hardcover)

"Interesting. The force of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared on this planet, but not in space. I wonder if 'Space' really exists?"

This is the first line of dialogue, and the rest of the book reads the same: like a joke, but without a punchline. Trying to be witty, trying to be creative, trying to be philosophical, but instead resulting in a fiery ball of disaster under the massive ego of an Asian-supremacist furry fetishist with a persecution complex. Eng is notoriously known by professors and students alike for his insane outbursts in college and taking himself far, far more seriously than anyone describing a script about an anthropomorphic mantis fighting a pegasus ever should. And this book is not just taken seriously, but taken as something of pride which Eng feared would by stolen by other authors seeking to leech off his brilliance before he could attain the glorious title of "Published Author." But then, is it really an accomplishment to publish a book when you have to actually pay the publisher to do it?

Enough about the author, the book is terrible. It seems to grasp the idea of a beginning, middle, and ending, but little else about the art of storytelling. Its attempts at creativity are akin to a five year-old having a massive battle with his action figures: he grabbed a bunch of other people's archetypes and put them in a bizarre configuration of events imitating his favorite books and movies. And like a child going on about how his dinosaur from the distant future is about to fight a ghost cowboy, the kid is rarely coherent and really only amusing themselves. The points where it tries to wax philosophically are silly enough to make even a child roll their eyes. The dialogue is stiff and hackneyed, riddled with lines you couldn't say aloud with gagging. People whip out books and start reading to one another in the middle of fight scenes.

Obnoxious, worthless, [...]. Avoid it at all costs, no matter how many negative reviews he deletes.

79 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mildly diverting, occasionally interesting, but ultimately forgettable, August 3, 2006

By 

The Scathing Pen "The Scathing Pen" (Nebraska, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate (Hardcover)

I'm going to have to go against the overwhelming number of positive reviews for this work and say that I didn't really enjoy it as much as everyone else did. It was basically a rehash of the old fantasy/dragons template with a pseudo-science fiction twist. The author had some pretty interesting ideas in this book, but all of them were poorly-conceived and clumsily-executed. Not to mention that the characters and setting, while initially surprising, quickly and permanently settled into the stale tropes that had been mined so recently by other works such as Eragon.

The main character is Dennagon, your standard sword-wielding fantasy protagonist who works as some sort of guard. His Maguffin object is the fabled Lexicon, a magic/technological item that is supposed to have infinite knowledge. Opposing him in this quest is robot dragon known as Drekkenoth, who wishes to destroy the Lexicon to prevent knowledge from coming into the world. Over the course of the story, Dennagon develops allies to help him combat the evil Drekkenoth.

These characters, needless to say, are flat. Dennagon is a wide-eyed seeker of knowledge while Drekkenoth is a soulless, eternally-manipulative evil mastermind. Attempts to develop them are vain at best and chances are the author doesn't really consider them to be living, breathing dwellers of his fictional `World'.

The only compliment I can sincerely offer to this piece is that it addresses many interesting philosophical points. It addresses them clumsily, robotically, and without any flair for elocution or even anything more than flat dissertations. But they are interesting, and unique for a fantasy work.

All in all, Dragon: Lexicon Triumvirate is simply not in the ranks of Tolkien, or Isaac Asimov, or Terry Pratchett, even. It's not Douglas Adams or J.K. Rowling or Diana Wynne Jones. In fact, it's barely as good as Christopher Paolini's Eragon trilogy. Personally, I would recommend either one of those authors over this one, because Dragon: Lexicon Triumvirate is simply a bland, boring book.

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Well Done Book, July 30, 2005

By 

Joanne "Jo" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate (Hardcover)

Straight to it: DLT, one star out of five; plot is slow and thick; characters are too "far out;" writing style undeveloped; settings are unbelievable (even for fantasy); cover is (pardon this word) "cheesy;" one good thing about it (pointed out by Jerry Wright aka "Mr. Bewildered") is that the book itself is well done, with good binding and paper, unfortunately for the writer, thought, that part has nothing to do with him.