Customer Reviews

Dragonslayer

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This is a very fun novelization of the movie DRAGONSLAYER, which just happens to be one of my top ten favorite films of all times. I recently found this book in a used book store, and although I generally don't like novelizations, this one was pretty awesome.

Its fun to see how the author expanded on the characters to create deeper and more interesting backgrounds than what you see in the film. For instance, he gives an amazingly brilliant explanation for why that horse magically appears at the end of the film. It seemed oddly unexplained in the movie, but in the book he explains that Galen has a special power to influence the behavior of animals, but he hasn't realized it yet. So although the plot of the story shows that Galen never actually had the magic powers he thought he had (they actually came from the wizard's crystal), he does have his own special power that he can go on to use in the future.

There are numerous other wonderful extrapolations of film events to be found here, which you will have to discover for yourself by reading this wonderful book!

chuck ballew

The book was fairly interesting, it did have thrilling moments. However, it was not one of the books that left me feeling a bit of remorse that it was all over as some that I've read recently.

On a lark, and having found a copy that I bought but never read, I packed this novelization of the 1981 film for a vacation. In the film, Peter Mcnichol plays a sorcerer's apprentice who fights against a dragon when his mentor dies. "Dragonslayer" is actually the story of a battle between two evils - both the dragon and a corrupt king who holds lotteries to choose who will be sacrificed to the dragon to placate it. The novel adds many elements, but doesn't do much with them. The place is Urland, an ancient British kingdom in England about the time of St. Patrick, with the ancient ways of magic and similar superstitions giving way to a new existence basd on the cross. Few take the Christians that seriously and look for salvation to the magicians when Vermithrax, the evil dragon, takes up residence in Urland's heartland. The author seems to want to draw a picture of what life was like in those days as a new faith swept Europe and the Roman occupation remained very real in the people's minds. He even draws a better picture of the relationship between the Dragon and the magicians without having to explain it so succintly that there's no mystery. unfortunately, he doesn't get that far before he goes back to battle with the dragon. He also misses one important plot element - the Dragon itself. With the world at a crossroad between the lore of magic and the faith of the cross, the dragon has a meaning that also changes. To Galen, the young magician, the Dragon is the last of his kind, a bitter old monster intent on making life miserable for whoever it sees. For the Christains, the Dragon is not a stubborn remnant of a dying age, but the devil itself, intent on aborting a nascent religion. Though Galen and magic is the hero, it's the christian viewpoint that seems more compelling. This book is the one that teaches that Vermithrax means "Worm of Thrace".

This is a good companion to the movie. It fills in a lot of gaps and provides much background information. More attention is paid to the main character's motivation and secondary characters are given more depth.

Unfortunately, without the movie this book is somewhat lackluster. It gets off to a very slow start. Finally the story starts moving only to stall out again. The second half of the book flows much more easily than the beginning which seems to stutter along.

It is, in fact, all the added information which so enriches the movie that cases all the trouble in the novel. If this had been Wayland Drew's project from beginning to end he could have inserted all these details into the story with much more grace. But this book was based on someone else's screenplay and Mr. Drew had to put the extras in wherever he could make them fit.

All in all I would recommend this book only if you have seen the movie. If you haven't seen the movie I would advise you to go find it.

This novelization, like most, is more detailed and oriented to an older crowd than the movie.

This story is a staple of the whole Fantasy/D&D genre.