Customer Reviews

Raven Walking Pb (The Dragon Circle)

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

 

 

This is the first book of the Dragon Cycle. I have the trade paperback volumes, published in London by Heinemann, of both this one and the second book, "Dragon waking". Before i get to the crux of the matter, i should say that the large print makes for very easy and fun reading.

The third book, "Dragon Burning" was published in hard cover by Ace in October of the following year and it was a very difficult wait. Waiting too long for "The Wheel of Time" books made me lose interest, hoping for Melanie Rawn's "Exiles III" will soon be a forgotten memory. I am still hoping for the discovery of a forgotten manuscript of Hugh Cook ,who unfortunately passed away a few years ago, to add to his fabulous ten volumes.

These are authors who changed the definition of "Fantasy". Fantasy was basically romance within a mythical background with mythical characters wherein good fought evil and won almost every time. There was Odysseus and King Arthur, and Alice, followed by hundreds of Victorians (19th century, 20th century and current) and then Tolkien came, followed closely by Harry Potter.

When an author comes up with characters who are even more real than the people around you, characters who are both good and not so good, evil and compassionate, emphatic and obtuse, greedy and pleasant, many readers used to the typical fantasy have difficulty understanding and empathising with them. "Frustration of rising expectations" was a term used in the 1950s and 60s about the forced development of barely emerging peoples and nations. This term aptly applies to the disgruntled readers of this trilogy.

At the risk of being mean, i have to say that the reviewers of the third book of the Dragon circle Trilogy, were readers of the old romance type of Fantasy, or possibly the new wave of "Urban Fantasy" readers. They were not willing to put the grey matter to work when reading and reviewing these volumes.

Some points:
- Please read the first book first, if you do not like it, stop there.
- Be prepared to be transported to a place where there are no armies, heroes, castles, towns, cities, rhyme, reason, a buit up planet, a totally wel-built up different civilization. You will be in a fog that is not a fog. a dream that can hurt its characters and even kill them. A dangerous miasma in a place you and th characters should not be. Yet it is all in great technicolor. Most of the background scenery was done by a photoshop artist, Craig shaw Gardner, with words, before the advent of photoshop.
- The characters are people you have met, glimpsed or thought of in life and not many who appeared as characters in other books, fantasy or not.
- You should not ask the question "why?" too much while reading, because the author and the characters' main answer is "because!"
- The style is pleasant and flows well.
- There is a great deal of thrilling expectation, by the reader and the characters.
- There is fear and humor, sometimes combined.
- Cannibals, ghosts, ravenous creatures and Poe's raven in disguise appear together with monkey like beings and being like monkeys.

Get the three books, go to a secluded seaside resort and read them, possibly sharing with a companion, or with your teens. especially if you go to a place like Kekova or Patara or Cirali or Olympos on the Turkish Mediterranean coast, i will give you a good chance of enjoying both the location with its antique ruins and different foliage and the books more. Do not watch TV, films and especialy the news during that time. You will be in someone else's dream, a dream that appears too much like a combination of all the dreams you had and those you will have.