The Dragon Griaule [Hardcover]

Lucius Shepard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2012

More than twenty-five years ago, Lucius Shepard introduced us to a remarkable fictional world, a world separated from our own 'by the thinnest margin of possibility.' There, in the mythical Carbonales Valley, Shepard found the setting for 'The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,' the classic account of an artist--Meric Cattanay--and his decades long effort to paint--and kill--a dormant, not quite dead dragon measuring 6,000 feet from end to end. The story was nominated for multiple awards and is now recognized as one of its author's signature accomplishments.

Over the years, Shepard has revisited this world in a number of brilliant, independent narratives that have illuminated the Dragon's story from a variety of perspectives. This loosely connected series reached a dramatic crossroads in the astonishing novella, 'The Taborin Scale'. The Dragon Griaule now gathers all of these hard to find stories into a single generous volume. The capstone of the book--and a particular treat for Shepard fans--is 'The Skull,' a new 40,000 word novel that advances the story in unexpected ways, connecting the ongoing saga of an ancient and fabulous beast with the political realities of Central America in the 21st century. Augmented by a group of engaging, highly informative story notes, The Dragon Griaule is an indispensable volume, the work of a master stylist with a powerful--and always unpredictable--imagination.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Subterranean; Deluxe Hardcover Edition edition (May 31, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596064560
• ISBN-13: 978-1596064560
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #826,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Collects all the Griule stories June 5, 2012

By Katherine Hooper VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

"His flesh has become one with the earth. He knows its every tremor and convulsion. His thoughts roam the plenum, his mind is a cloud that encompasses our world. His blood is the marrow of time. Centuries flow through him, leaving behind a residue that he incorporates into his being. Is it any wonder he controls our lives and knows our fates?"

The Dragon Griaule collects Lucius Shepard's six stories and novellas about Griaule, the mile-long 750-foot-high dragon that has been in a spellbound sleep for thousands of years. He rests in a valley where his body composes much of the landscape, creating hills and forests and waterfalls. Trees and other vegetation have taken root on his body and animals and parasites live in the habitat he produces. Griaule overlooks the town of Teocinte and another shantytown rests on his back. He's angry about his situation and his negative emotions ("a tonnage of hatred") cast an oppressive pall over the towns that are under his purview. Or at least that's what the people who live there say. They blame their disagreeable personalities, and the wicked deeds they do, on the angry dozing dragon. All attempts to kill Griaule and to free the people from his power have been unsuccessful.

Shepard's first story, "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule," introduces Meric Cattanay, an uncelebrated young artist who proposes to kill Griaule by painting him ("I don't believe Griaule will be able to perceive the menace in a process as subtle as art"). At first, his real goal is to swindle the town council, but after exploring the dragon he is struck by its majesty, and when the council agrees, Cattanay's life's work begins. For forty years he paints the dragon; it's a time filled with beauty, wonder, love, loss, guilt, and disappointment.

I was enchanted by the imaginative world created atop and around the huge dragon's body, but I was even more fascinated by the world of "The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter" for in this story we get to explore inside the dragon. The girl referred to in the title is Catherine, a shallow flighty girl who escapes murderous pursuers by climbing into Griaule's mouth. There she finds some amazing scenery, meets an entirely alien culture, and learns that Griaule has a job for her to do which requires her to live and work inside his body. This story has a beautiful ending which reminds us to honor those quietly suffering people who spend their lives caring for someone who may never thank them for their devotion.

"The Father of Stones" is an exciting murder mystery in which the priest of a dragon cult is murdered by a gemcutter with a huge gemstone that is alleged to be an artifact of Griaule's body. The murderer admits his crime but claims that Griaule made him do it. This is an unprecedented defense strategy, but it could make the career of Adam Korrogly, the murderer's attorney, if he's successful. Knowing that he needs to be very careful with this case, he sets out to investigate the complicated crime and discovers that his client may not be the only one under Griaule's control.

In "Liar's House" Griaule is once again manipulating humans. This time he plans to sire an heir, so he coerces a strong, smart, uneducated man named Hota into doing all the dirty work. In return, Hota will learn how to fly. "Liar's House" was my least favorite in this collection. It's a long, deep and depressing character study of Hota, who I thought was inconsistently portrayed in places. I was also disappointed that "Liar's House" lacked connection to the later stories, but maybe there are future plans for that.

"The Taborin Scale" is about a coin collector named George Taborin. When he polishes old coins, George sometimes experiences strange visions relating to the coin's origin. When he finds a dragon scale in Teocinte and starts to rub it clean, he and a prostitute are transported back in time to the valley before Griaule was entrenched there. Apparently, the dragon wants them to witness some important event. Unlike the other stories in The Dragon Griaule, "The Taborin Scale" uses footnotes to explain some of the details of Griaule's history. Here we learn, also, of the effects of Meric Cattanay's paint. But this story, like the others, isn't so much about the dragon as it is about some aspect of the human experience. In this case, Lucius Shepard considers what it means to be a family.

Many of Shepard's readers probably thought that "The Taborin Scale" was the last of his stories about the dragon Griaule, but "The Skull" is a new novella which takes place in our modern world where, apparently, Griaule is able to exert some of his dark influence. This story has the dragon involved in Central American politics and features bored housewives who hang out in gay bars. In the author's notes at the end of the book, Shepard explains that "The Skull" mirrors some of his own experiences in Guatemala. Parts of this story drag on too long, but the end is intensely exciting.

I greatly enjoyed The Dragon Griaule. All of the stories are beautifully written and subtly humorous, but the first two are my favorites because they allow us to explore the dragon inside and out. The world Lucius Shepard has created is unique and imaginative -- a lush landscape fashioned from a huge predator whose hurt pride and seething anger oppress and threaten the populace. Shepard uses this premise to explore the negative aspects of human nature. His characters are deep and introspective, constantly exploring their desires and motives, always wondering whether their own corruption comes from inside themselves or from the dragon's evil influence. I hope there will be more stories about the dragon Griaule.
Originally posted at FanLit.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant, thought-provoking collection of stories June 18, 2012

By Stefan TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Lucius Shepard's classic story "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule" introduced the world to Griaule, a huge (as in six thousand feet long) paralyzed dragon who shapes the lives of the people living around, on and in some cases inside him by means of the malignant mental energy that seems to be his only remaining power.

Meric Cattanay, the main character of this story, is ready to do what no one else has been able to achieve: he offers to kill off Griaule once and for all. His method is unusual: he proposes to get rid of the dragon by painting him: if the inhabitants of the city that grew in the shadow of the dragon are willing to advance him a small fortune, he will spend several decades painting a huge mural on the dragon, slowly killing it with the toxins in his paints.

Lucius Shepard revisited Griaule's world ("separated from this one by the thinnest margin of possibility") on several occasions in the two decades or so since the original story was published, resulting in a handful of brilliant novelettes and novellas that approach the dragon and his influence from various perspectives and in different periods: "The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter," "The Father of Stones," "Liar's House," and "The Taborin Scale." Thanks to Subterranean Press, all of these are now available for the first time in one volume: The Dragon Griaule. To put the icing on the cake, the book also includes a long new Griaule novella (or possibly a short novel) entitled The Skull, as well as a set of story notes by the author giving background about the stories and often the circumstances in which they were written. In other words, you may want to check out this book even if you've managed to track down all the other stories.

The human cast for each of these stories is different. Their common thread is Griaule, the monster who dominates the world even in paralysis. The sheer size of the dragon highlights the insignificance of the tiny human ants scrabbling around his hide. It's almost as if they're living on or near a volcano: at the mercy of an uncontrollable force that's always there in the background, even if they occasionally manage to pretend otherwise. This creates a dark, even fatalistic atmosphere: people come and go with their romances, dreams and petty rivalries, but Griaule perseveres.

Because the human characters change from story to story, they often feel insignificant and incidental, but that doesn't mean they're uninteresting. Lucius Shepard has one of the sharpest pens in the genre, and he's in top form in this set of stories. He has the ability to give a character shape in just a few phrases by acerbically picking out one or two traits and then mercilessly hammering them down in clean, biting prose. At one point he describes someone's trophy wife as "sunglasses by Gucci and make-up by Sherwin-Williams." There's often some dissonance between the surreal atmosphere of the stories and the razor-sharp descriptions of people's emotions and actions as they wander around in the haze of Griaule's atmosphere. It makes for a bizarre but highly enjoyable reading experience as Shepard traces the lives of several people who get sucked into Griaule's orbit over the years.

But what does it all mean? Until I read this book, I always assumed that Griaule was meant to be a symbol of fantasy as a genre, the dragon being one of its oldest tropes and one that's been beaten to death in too many stories in the past. In The Dragon Griaule, we don't get your typical fire-breathing magical lizard but instead a paralyzed monster, although it's still exuding its influence and shaping the world around it. Then an artist proposes to kill it. With art. If anything, it reminded me of a less religion-inspired version of James Morrow's Towing Jehovah, in which God's two mile long corpse has fallen into the Atlantic and must be towed towards the Arctic for internment. Seemed like the start of a solid interpretation--until I read the author's story notes, which explicitly connect Griaule to the Reagan Administration, "a baleful monster beaming out his vindictive thought and shaping us to its will." While the political theme was there all along in retrospect, it definitely becomes most pronounced in the newest addition to the canon, The Skull, which breaks through the thin margin of possibility to bring Griaule explicitly into the reality of South American politics.

So, maybe not a commentary on the state of the fantasy genre after all? It just goes to show that there's more food for thought in each of these stories than you'll find in most full length novels. Each of them really deserves a review as long as this one, making The Dragon Griaule simply a brilliant collection. Subterranean Press has to be commended for collecting them all in one volume, because they're hard to track down individually but work together so incredibly well. Highly recommended.

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice book to have but... May 7, 2013

By Andrew Gibbs

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This collects the 5 previously published stories about the dragon Griaule, the first published in 1984, together with a longer story original to this collection. This is particularly interesting given that the dragon is supposedly killed in the first story. The stories are typical of Shepard's second tier work - well written although tending to be a bit overly elaborate at times, exploring some interesting ideas. Sometimes I think his plots are just a little thin or poorly explained. It's interesting that sometimes Shepard is guilty of over-explaining events and sometimes the reasons for plot turns or character motivations is a bit cryptic, at least to me. I thought the best story was Father of stones, This explores the notion that if the dragon is controlling everything what is freewill and how can we tell when we are exercising it. The new story took events from a time that was not clearly defined (although there is a reference to 1853 into present day South America. There was a nice transition to bring things up to date and some interesting ideas and set up in this story, but the plot resolution wasn't the climax it seemed it should have been. I thought Shepard's afterword to this story suggests a factual retelling of events that inspired some of the background to this story would have made a stronger story than what he actually told. The afterwords in general add nicely to the stories and help an appreciation of where Shepard was coming from at the time.

A worthy collection. But perhaps not quite Shepard at the top of his form.