Customer Reviews

Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"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.

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.

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.

I was surprised to see so many five starred reviews for this book. When I looked a little further I noticed that while the reviewers who ranked the book as not very good were obviously real people who had done many other reviews, the majority of the good reviews came from screenames that had never done another book review on Amazon before or since. So be warned, the good reviews were put here obviously by somebody trying to pump up this books rating on here.

Kenneth Eng is an author for our times, and "Dragons: Lexicon Triumverate" is a novel for our times. Concerned with heady concepts like the nature of reality, logical evolution, and how dragons are totally wicked sweet, Eng's book is a tour-de-force of barely-constrained fetishism, and an observant reader can imagine precisely when Eng's hands left the keyboard to begin frenetically masturbating over his own furious fantasies of being a mighty scaled warlord and totally slaughtering tons of humans. Basically what you wind up with is a fantasy novel as penned by your average MySpace user; disjointed, full of ridiculous concepts and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric, all wrapped up in a tight bundle of self-righteousness and topped off with a delicious cherry of incoherence.

I've seen heavy metal album covers that had more substance.

-hx

Everything from the pacing to the characterization is too outlandish to take seriously and any attempts to read it as a serious work of fiction led to a headache within a minute. In truth, it read more like a farce (and that is often times a stretch) and can only be enjoyed in the same fashion as the movies mocked in the mystery science theater 3000 could be.

[...]
As to the book itself, it really is not worth the hubbub that it seems to have generated here at Amazon... it's very thickly written, almost as if the author is trying to impress someone... in reality, this comes off as pretentious, and does the exact opposite, at the cost of his cobbled-together story line. The author claims to have written this in speedy fashion, and quite frankly, it shows-- advice: slow down, the (literary) life you save could be your own.

It's amazing how this blows and sucks, all at the same time! Didn't think it was possible, but yes, this book actually blows AND sucks! It'll huff, it'll puff, and it'll blow... period.

...if you're looking for a laugh. XD I would highly recommend taking the time to sit down and read this book through, especially if you love the English language and are having a bad day. Cyborg dragons, the Middle Ages, large amounts of blood and gore, and even larger amounts of grammatical carnage; what more could you ask for? If you've ever watched and enjoyed the movie Laser Mission, this is the book for you.

Dennagon is a dragon sentry of Drakemight. His life is dedicated to a search for knowledge. Only Dennagon doesn't take the easy path to enlightenment. Unlike most of the other dragons, he refuses to consume the information-filled black orbs. Instead, he seeks out facts directly from books and the world around him. This sounds fine on its surface, except that Drakemight's king, Drekkenoth, is secretly using the black orbs to corrupt his people. Now all that stands between him and world domination is Dennagon, with his untainted soul.

The adventure really begins when a band of anti-Drekkenoth dissidents tell Dennagon that they must find the Lexicon, which is the source of all pure knowledge. Dennagon is intrigued by the notion that such an item could exist, but wary of the ragtag collection of traitors who are offering to help him find it.

DRAGONS: LEXICON TRIUMVIRATE is a book that's got it all. It has the fantasy elements of a kingdom run by dragons, who are engaged in an ongoing war with humans. It has science fiction in the form of time-travel and mechanized fighting dragons. It has arguments about assorted topics in the field of physics, including the nature of time and space. It has wild fight scenes among dragons, mechanized dragons, and other assorted creatures, including dinosaurs (time-travel, remember?) and hydras. It has corrupt government conspiracies. Like I said, this book has it all.

And having it all is exactly what I didn't like about DRAGONS: LEXICON TRIUMVIRATE. Perhaps my world view is too narrow because I don't want a book that includes everything. I found myself exhausted every time I started reading. There were just too many genres represented. The writing style was also a challenge. Instead of saying something simple like, "`Surrender or die,' his captor ordered," this book says, "`Surrender or be annihilated,' were the conditions of the dominating party." (p. 167). And I was always annoyed when the characters slipped into discussions of obscure topics in physics.

While I was not a fan of how this story was told, I can definitely see how it would appeal to other readers. Some people who aren't as narrow minded as I am would probably really enjoy the creative mixture of science fiction and fantasy elements. For those readers, this would doubtless be a real hit. And for those who enjoy theoretical discussions of the problems of time-travel, DRAGONS: LEXICON TRIUMVIRATE offers a great deal of food for thought.

Reviewed by: K. Osborn Sullivan