Lackey does dragons

[bibliogramma]

Joust
Alta

Just for fun. Mercedes Lackey has a new series, based loosely on ancient Egypt before the union of the Two Kingdoms, with dragons.

Lackey's dragons aren't very intelligent compared to, say, McCaffrey's dragons, but they are used as winged mounts for what are, in essence, knights of the air. Their riders are the elite warriors in the long conflict between the Two Kingdoms, and they do indeed joust.

Of course, there's conspiracy and evil magic and lots of other cool stuff behind the war, and there are at least two more volumes in the series, but this is nice mind cady and I'm looking forward to reading more.

Comments

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I find animal-like dragons being ridden by humans more realistic. When the mount is just as intelligent (or more) than his rider, you need some pretty good reasons for why he's letting that little human on. It's believable, however, that a wild creature like these dragons could be captured by humans and bent to their will.

I love how Lackey goes so in depth into the biology of the dragons. The amount of detail she puts into it all is wonderful.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Certainly, you need to find reasons for intelligent creatures (like McCaffrey's or Novik's dragons) letting themzselves be used as beasts of burden. McCaffrey eventually decided that they had been bio-engineered to want to bond with and serve humans. Novik is using the situation of intelligent creatures in servitude to explore slavery versus co-operation of free individuals as models of organising society. Both of which work for me, because there are explanations.

What is interesting about Lackey's dragons, is that in making them animals, and focusing on the whole issue of training them (remember in all of this that when she's not being an author, one of the things she does is work with raptors, and I think she's extrapolated a lot from that experience), she's going against the standard fantasy image of dragons as vastly intelligent and wise creatures.

I like writing that does new things with traditional concepts.