Donita K. Paul

In this fifth, and final book of the series, The Dragon Keeper Chronicles stumbles to a close with most of the characters standing around not doing much of anything while the action is resolved by a poorly set up deus ex machina. This book offers a new, and more or less random villain, and also includes more examples of Mrs. Paul's tendency to leave plot threads hanging, resolve much of the action of the story off-stage, and eschew storytelling in favor of didactic pseudo-Christian lessons. show more In short, DragonLight follows in the turgid and uninteresting footsteps of its predecessors to deliver a decidedly weak story and an uninspired reading experience.

The story picks up several years after where DragonFire left off with Amara having enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity after the successive defeats of Risto, Burner Stox, Crim Cropper, and The Pretender. This idyllic existence is shattered when Bardon discovers "The Followers" a monastic sect of Paladin worshippers who have upset the natural order by setting up a small settlement so they can live out an ascetic existence of wearing uniform clothing, eating bad food, and not speaking much. But their ideas are almost immediately dubbed heretical, and they are identified as a threat. It seems as though Mrs. Paul is using The Followers to make a comment upon religious sects whose theology she disapproves of - the doctrine espoused by The Followers seems to bear some similarities to the teachings of Scientologists, Mormons, Catholics, and maybe a couple of other religious groups - but it is difficult to identify exactly who is being metaphorically condemned. It is also difficult for the reader to figure out what specifically is heretical about the teachings of The Followers, since Mrs. Paul has done such a poor job of establishing the parameters of the pseudo-Christian Wulder worship that is at the heart of her books. Bardon, Dar, Kale, and the other main characters certainly tell the reader that The Followers are twisting Wulder's teachings, but the reader has almost no way of figuring it out on their own. And this simply highlights one of the primary recurring weaknesses of Mrs. paul's storytelling: instead of providing sufficient background information and then allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions, she waits until a crisis has arisen in the story and dictates to the reader what the correct solution is, oftentimes using "principles of Wulder" elucidated for the first time as the solution to the crisis.

Of course, no matter how dangerous this threat is, it cannot stand in the way of Bardon and Kale heading off to dance at a party and then trek to the uncharted northern reaches to help Regidor and Gilda find the lost meech colony. After all, Regidor and Gilda have only waited several years to make this journey, so it is clearly of pressing importance that it be done immediately despite the sudden appearance of a mysterious heretical sect. Somewhat justifying this sudden need to head to the wilderness in search of the secretive meech colony is the fact that Gilda is carrying an egg that she insists she can only present to what she imagines to be the glorious meech civilization. However, Bardon and Kale seem to take a fatalistic attitude that, having decided to help search for the lost meech colony, they cannot turn aside and deal with a different potential threat because Wulder apparently already assigned them the "find the meech colony" quest, and they can't do anything else until they complete that.

(As an aside, one meme that runs through all of the books in the series is this very self-conscious attitude that the characters have when they are undertaking a task that they are then "on a quest". This sort of thinking more or less fits with the didactic tone of the books, but it still makes the characters and situations seem oddly artificial. Apparently, once one is "on a quest' it seems that one is more or less obligated refuse any change to one's objectives until the appointed task has been completed, yielding a sort of single-minded myopia that dovetails fairly well with the central theme of surrendering all personal initiative that runs through the books.)

After the obligatory dilly-dallying that seems to crop up in just about all of the Dragon Keeper books when danger threatens (in this case, spending lots of time getting to and participating in a big dance party), Bardon discovers the second big "threat" the rears its head to threaten the peacefulness of Amara in the form of swarms of tiny fire-breathing poison-spined black dragons that seem to randomly crop up and mindlessly attack whoever happens to be in their way. Of course, since Kale and Bardon are on the "find the meech colony" quest, there is no possibility that they might investigate where these dragon swarms are coming from instead, no matter how relevant Kale's skills as a "dragon keeper" might be. Instead, Kale and Bardon head off to the northern reaches to find Regidor and Gilda, but not before Mrs. Paul sidetracks the story to show the reader how a secondary character has created the amazing innovation of a magical crystal ball.

One would think that in a series titled The Dragon Keeper Chronicles that being a dragon keeper might be central to the stories. But other than the fact that Kale can find dragon eggs (of dubious value to the plots of the stories), and has a menagerie of trivially useful minor dragons that follow her around, being a dragon keeper doesn't seem to be that big of a deal, despite the constant utterances of other characters about how special this gift supposedly is. In fact, except for the fact that the mindless dragon swarms seem to react quite oddly to Kale's presence, there is no indication that her status as "dragon keeper" is of any value at all, and despite the book heavily featuring the meech dragons and eventually a dragon antagonist, her supposedly incredibly special talents don't feature in this book at all. This should not surprise anyone who has read through the series to this point, as dropping plot threads is more or less Mrs. Paul's stock-in-trade as an author. For example, the plot of DragonSpell revolved around the threatened use of the powers of an unhatched meech egg to create a new eighth "low race" and upset the balance of power in Amara. But once that book concluded, that entire line of thinking vanished from the series, never to be mentioned again. One would think that if meech eggs were this powerful, in a coherently designed fantasy world the meech would live in fear that their eggs would be stolen to be used by some mad wizard seeking power. But since Mrs. Paul isn't really interested in telling a story so much as she is interested in imparting "correct" moral lessons, once the usefulness of a plot device has served its instructive purpose, it seems to be dropped without a second thought.

The story more or less plods on, as everyone stops off in a village to have the usual interruption of their pressing quest to partake in a leisurely round of tea and cakes. Mrs. Paul seems to have figured out that her characters aren't really moving with much urgency, since an earthquake literally shakes everyone out of their complacency. Of course, there are no casualties, because Toopka runs about with Stittiponder (yes, they brought small children on a supposedly dangerous quest) and warns everyone the earthquake is coming. How does she know? Well, like most "knowledge" that people glean in this series, she just knows it presumably via divine inspiration. But rebuilding from the earthquake is interrupted when Kale and Bardon are called upon to rescue Holt from his espionage mission to infiltrate the Followers. While the actual rescue of Holt takes place as part of the narrative of the book, Mrs. Paul is true to form and has most of the interaction with the Followers, like so many of the other plot elements of the book, take place entirely off-stage. Time and again some interesting plot point comes up, and then is resolved entirely out of sight of the reader, only to be reported after the fact. The wizard Namee is tempted to join the Followers and repents, off-stage. Holt convinces many of the Followers to leave the cult, off-stage. Holt rescues the children held by the Followers, off-stage. Paladin is imprisoned by the Followers, off-stage. N'Rae is called in to permit communication with the imprisoned Paladin using animals, off-stage. Paladin's Followers rise up and defeat the Followers, off-stage. In short, almost everything that has to do with the rise and fall of this supposedly sinister threat to all of Amara is too unimportant to actually include in the book as anything other than an afterthought.

And this is because Mrs. Paul feels compelled to introduce a new villain, having either killed off or rendered impotent all of the villains from the previous books. First Risto was the main opponent, and henchman (and rival) to the supposedly even more powerful Pretender. But he was killed off in a wizard duel in DragonQuest. The Burner Stox and Crim Cropper were elevated from Risto's henchmen to main villains, and once again potential rivals to The Pretender (apparently, when you are evil, loyalty is such a foreign concept that every henchman is just itching to bump off their boss and take his place). But they were killed off in DragonFire - Stox almost by accident, and Cropper in a fairly dull fight while riding a dragon. And then at the end of DragonFire Paladin dismisses The Pretender as a nonthreat almost contemptuously, rendering the supposedly dire danger to all of Amara completely impotent with a wave of his hand. While this might be theologically satisfying to adherents to Mrs. Paul's particular brand of faith, it makes for a pretty weak story. And it necessitates producing a new villainous threat to Amara from thin air. So for DragonLight Mrs. Paul conjures up the previously unmentioned (and for the characters in the story, previously unknown) mountain-sized dragon Mot Angra from the weeds out beyond left-field. Mot Angra proves to be the source of one of the two horrible threats facing Amara, while the other turns out to have have an almost entirely random and trivial source. As an aside, one is left to wonder how strong the faith Amarans have in Wulder truly is if it is shaken to its foundation by a threat that has such a minor origin.

But the fact that these threats result from these wild card elements in the story doesn't prove to be a hindrance to the characters, because time and again, Mrs. Paul drives home the point that one shouldn't try to figure out anything on one's own, or even really take the initiative, since Wulder will provide the answer to everything. Several plots points come up that a reader might expect would foreshadow the resolution of the story, but any of these that result from characters using their own initiative to solve a problem all turn out to be red herrings. When Kale and the kimens get close to Mot Angra, their powers over light seem to falter, which leads Kale to speculate that "light" might be a means to defeat the dragon. This turns out to be a red herring. At one point, Regidor heads off to try to consult Librettowitt's extensive library to find out if anyone has ever recorded any weaknesses of the dragon, but this turns out to be a red herring. Regidor's research turns up nothing, and oddly, Regidor's response is to return to join in an effort to defeat the dragon using brute force tactics that everyone had previously agreed simply would not work (and in case you were wondering, they don't). Several characters speculate that Kale's abilities as a "dragon-keeper" might prove to be useful in dealing with the threat of a massive evil dragon. This proves to be a red herring, as Kale's powers prove to be completely useless (seemingly proving yet again that being a "dragon-keeper" is of almost no consequence to the stories). Paladin does solve the mystery of the lost lyrics to a song that is supposedly important for keeping Mot Angra imprisoned, but he doesn't actually do much other than just know what the right lyrics are, and once again, this bit of knowledge proves to be of no consequence in defeating Mot Angra. Basically, the message Mrs. Paul seems intent on conveying is that taking the initiative to solve a problem is just a waste of time. One should simply sit on one's ass and wait for God, excuse me Wulder, to solve them for you.

And Wulder does solve the problem in the end, in a manner that is almost entirely random, entirely unsatisfying, and serves to demonstrate what a dick Mrs. Paul's God really is. Basically, Toopka and Stittiponder (remember, we are taking children along on our dangerous quest into the unknown to confront an otherworldly and as far as the characters know undefeatable menace) are visited by God, er Wulder. Wulder removes a lump from Toopka's heart that has been killing her and cures Stittiponder's blindness. These actions supposedly show Wulder's love, but since Wulder is directly responsible for the debilitating conditions to begin with, the real message is that Wulder is like a firefighter who commits arson so he can be the hero who puts the blaze out. Wulder made Stittiponder a blind street urchin to begin with, so how is it an act of love for Wulder to then cure his blindness? Wulder inserted a ruck hard lump that almost kills her into Toopka's body for his own purposes (more on that later), so how it is an act of love for him to cure her? In short, Mrs. Paul's message, which is supposed to cause the reader to gaze in wonder at the glory of God's (umm, Wulder's) love, really amounts to "Wulder is a complete jerk who uses people like playthings because it amuses him". But Toopka manages to defeat Mot Angra with a device that is literally a deus ex machina that has almost no groundwork laid for it. In short, despite the characters spending much of the latter half of the book worrying about how to defeat Mot Angra and trying to figure out a way to do it, none of that matters and everything is resolved by a plot device that pops up at the last second. Of course, Wulder isn't a kind enough deity to resolve the plot without lots of soldiers and kimens getting killed by the evil dragon, so at least Wulder is consistently portrayed as a dick in the books.

As a bonus, in the final chapter, Mrs. Paul adds in a story about Toopka's background that further reinforces Wulder's dickish nature, as it turns out that she was not just a homeless street urchin. It is revealed that she had previously been a fully grown woman who watched her husband and children get killed and to "spare her the pain" Wulder transformed her into a child and suppressed the bad memories. This apparently allowed Toopka to carry around "Wulder's truth" to be used to defeat Mot Angra. But since, according the the theology of the book, nothing happens without Wulder directing it to be so, rather than sparing Toppka the pain of seeing her entire family killed, Wulder was the agent that caused that pain to begin with. And Wulder presumably did it because, despite being supposedly omnipotent, he couldn't think of a better way to defeat Mot Angra than having a bunch of children killed in front of their mother. It is obvious that Mrs. Paul really wants the reader to come away from her didactic tale with the impression that Wulder is an awesome deity, and by way of analogy, the God at the center of her real life faith is also an awesome deity. But unfortunately, the lesson that the story actually gives is that Wulder is a more evil entity than any of the "villains" that have been propped up to oppose him, and by analogy, so is the version of God that Mrs. Paul is evangelizing for.

In the end, DragonLight and The Dragon Keeper Chronicles lurch to an unsatisfying conclusion. The book closes on a deus ex machina that feels almost like a non-sequitur to the rest of the plot. And since the villain in this book is more or less unconnected to the villains or the plots from the first four books, it seems to not really be a conclusion to the series so much as the point where Mrs. Paul ran out of moralizing lessons to provide so she just stopped writing. In The Lord of the Rings the series stopped when Frodo destroyed the ring, and thus defeated Sauron. In The Chronicles of Narnia the series ended when the world ended. In The Chronicles of Prydain the series ended when Arawn was defeated. In The Dragon Keeper Chronicles the series just peters out without any real sort of overarching triumph or thematic conclusion. As a result, in addition to being didactic and lacking in strong storytelling, the series is also incredibly disjointed. As the conclusion to a weak and unsatisfying series that lacks any kind of continuing story, DragonLight is just not worth bothering with.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Dragons in the Valley is the sequel to The Vanishing Sculptor, and the second book in the Valley of the Dragons series which is a prequel to The DragonKeeper Chronicles series. I say this to point out that if you haven't read the show more previous six tedious books set in Donita K. Paul's world of pseudo-Christian preaching, this book will be nigh incomprehensible if you try to pick it up and read it first. I know this from direct experience, having tried to do exactly that. On the other hand, none of Donita K. Paul's books are really worth reading to begin, so anyone who simply skips them isn't really missing much. To be perfectly honest, the only reasons I kept slogging through these books were (a) a sense of obligation to properly review this book, having accepted it as an Early Reviewer Book, and (b) I kept hoping against hope that they would get better.

So, the question is, did they get better? The answer, unfortunately is "not really". Like all of the other books Mrs. Paul has produced, the book is little more than badly presented Christian apologetics dressed up in fantasy clothing. Though there is a meandering and fairly generic story contained in its pages, the book wanders off to extended digressions about the "principles of Wulder" and unconvincing conversion revelations at the drop of a hat. The overwhelming blandness of the story and the annoying and empty preaching combine to result in a book that isn't even bad enough to despise, but is merely bad enough to dislike.

The book starts out with three characters being given cryptic instructions to steal and separate the statues that were rejoined at great effort in the previous book. Why must they steal the statues? They are just told by the kimens who come and tell them in the middle of the night that they are "in danger" and expected to hop to following these diminutive messengers without question. One of the odder elements of the books is that kimens, as a race, somehow seem to get messages directly from Wulder. Why? Who knows, because it is never explained. No one in the books even really considers to ask the question "why are the kimens always getting messages from Wulder, and how do we know they are actually messages from Wulder, and not just random stuff the kimens invent". Even in Chiril, which is supposed to be very different from Amara because the inhabitants of Chiril have not been "shown the light" of Wulder, everyone seems to think kimens have some sort of special insight. This is yet another of the myriad of ways that Chiril remains exactly the same as Amara. It seems that, having created one fairly bland fantasy culture, Mrs. Paul decided that creating another would be too taxing, and just transferred most everything about the culture of the various imaginary races from one continent to the other.

So, having stolen the statues and cavalierly separated them on the say-so of a trio of random kimens (which in the last book was something that threatened to cause the destruction of the entire world), the heroes are then transported to a secret kimen village (which turns out to be not-so-secret after all, not that this matters) where the statues are reunited. At this point the characters are told that the statues have to be hidden away because the neighboring country of Baardack is threatening to invade, and apparently having the statues fall into the hands of a different hereditary dynasty would be a problem. Presumably this is because the rulers of Baardack or competent, because the rulers of Chiril clearly are not. One also wonders, given the extraordinary amount of pain and suffering that the separation of the statues causes, and since Wulder is supposed to be responsible for all of the events that happen in the world, exactly how big of a jerk is Wulder that he let this all happen. In short, by being responsible for everything that happens in the book, Wulder comes off as a complete dick who seems to revel in the death, pain, and suffering of war. But apparently that's okay, so long as the characters in the book learn the right lessons as a result.

The bulk of the book is punctuated with the drumbeats of impending war between Chiril and Baardack. Everyone knows that war is imminent, including King Yellat of Chiril. Agents from Baardack infiltrate into Chiril and begin making prominent officials disappear. So what is King Yellat's response? To send out Verrin Schope, his dimwitted wife, and a useless giant parrot to hang out in a tavern and try to figure out what is going on. Except everyone seems to know what is going on: everyone figures out almost immediately who the enemy agents are when they stumble into the tavern Verrin and his wife are sitting in. But do they call in agents of the law to apprehend the miscreants? Nope. They just let them continue killing people while trying to figure out how they are getting away with their evil schemes. Here's a clue: they are getting away with their evil schemes because you, Verrin Schope, are letting them. Where Mrs. Paul thinks she is including some masterful espionage intrigue, she just makes the story ludicrous. Verrin and Beccaroon don't have to ferret out how their enemies are doing what they are doing, or lay low, or otherwise keep themselves incognito - they are operating within their own country with the authority of the national government at their back. They can just have the oafish bad guys arrested, which would put an end to the disappearances (which turn out to be assassinations, so by sitting on their hands and wings, Verrin and Beccaroon allow dozens of people to be killed, and a later scene makes this crystal clear, but all Beccaroon does is express momentary regret that his gross incompetence resulted in a wandering man's death at the hands of some ruffians). Making this even stupider, they know that the head of Baardack's forces, Doremattris Groddenmitersay (did I mention how much the names of Mrs. Paul's characters suck) is lurking about. But do they try to stop him and decapitate the leadership of the invasion force? Of course not, so chalk another one up for the message in favor of complete passivity that runs through all of Mrs. Paul's writing.

Meanwhile, the Wizard Fenworth (one of the trio who helped steal the three statues near the beginning of the book) observes a strange and unique creature apparently in the employ of King Odidoddex of Baarack (among her other "gifts", Mrs. Paul is terrible at coming up with names) that is called simply "The Grawl", a creature presented as a feral, almost animal-like hunter that serves as a mercenary. So naturally Fenworth takes one of the three statues and heads off to investigate "The Grawl" (and he's always referred to this way, with a capitalized "The"). Remember, these are the three statues that must stay together or the life of Verrin Schope and the entire existence of the world is endangered. And Fenworth more or less cavalierly picks one up and heads off for a few weeks to follow an interesting creature as it murderously rampages across the countryside. And it turns out that having the statues separated causes a moral malaise to spread throughout Chiril as well, hampering the ability of the nation to prepare to defend itself against the impending invasion, but oddly seems to have no similar effect on Baardack. I suppose that God, I mean Wulder, is a Chiril partisan or something. Of course, Fenworth doesn't actually try to stop "The Grawl", and in the one confrontation with him just sends him away, which allows "The Grawl" to surreptitiously kill dozens of other people. Perhaps it is because they seem to assume that Wulder will make everything turn out okay in the end, but Mrs. Paul's protagonists never seem to consider the consequences of their own inaction.

At the same time, the artist Graddapotmorphit Bealomondore (once again, I'll note how much Mrs. Paul's character names suck), having been more or less randomly gifted with the Sword of Valor by Fenworth, heads out on a "quest" with the librarian Librettowit, the almost completely useless Princess Tipper, and a couple of interchangeable kimens. Along the way, Tipper breaks her ankle, they run afoul of more Baardackian agents, they find Fenworth, and Paladin pops in to drop off a dragon for Tipper and report that the war has actually started. This dire news, of course, prompts Fenworth to take the statues and Librettowit and head off to build a temple for them. Because, as the most powerful wizard in Chiril, it wouldn't make sense for him to help out with the actual war effort. Instead, he runs off to take a month or two to make an elaborate underground sanctuary in a remote part of Chiril. Meanwhile, they send the artist with no military skill and a magic sword and an incompetent princess to join in the war effort. And the only thing that makes sense about that decision is that King Yellat and his trusted advisers seem to be even more incompetent, with Verrin Schope (improbably) and Paladin (inevitably) being the only two who are capable. Because of this, King Yellat doesn't listen to them, and the war goes horribly badly for the Chirilians. One spends a good part of the novel wondering exactly why everyone seems to think it is so important to Wulder's plans to keep the incompetent royal family of Chiril in power. Not that the reader gets to see any of this, because, as usual, all of the action in the book takes place off-stage, and is only reported to the characters in the book (and thus to the reader) as news after the fact. Even the fall of the capital of the kingdom and the death of King Yellat is delivered to the reader as second hand news.

The war might not have gone so badly for the Chirilians, even with their incompetent leadership, but as usual in a Doniat Paul book, everyone seems to stop every couple of pages to have some tea, cakes, and fried fish. And Mrs. Paul feels the need to import more of her made-up food jargon too. Verrin Schope has an innkeeper make beet, carrot, and onion soup, and makes sure to inform everyone that it is chukkajoop. Hollee the kimen cooks jimmin chicken, because just cooking chicken wouldn't be jargon-laden enough. Fenworth introduces daggarts to Chiril, because just eating doughnuts wouldn't be "fantasy" enough. And so on. Even the beastly and supposedly feral "Grawl" turns out to be a dandy who keeps a secret fortress where he takes hot baths, peruses his extensive library, and eats tasty soup and roasted lamb. Everyone, it seems is a gourmet who stops off for hours to take in a seven course meal in the middle of waging a desperate war.

Even with all the stopping to eat leisurely meals, the Chirilians might have fared better in their war if they hadn't always been stopping to gaze in wonder at the world around them and then make the leap from the fact that trees are pretty to the assumption that therefore there must be a creator deity who loves them. This book, more than all the others that came before it in the Amara/Chiril based series, contains some of the most unconvincing "conversion" scenes where characters "find the joy in Wulder" and become believers for little reason other than it makes them feel good in their tummies. These conversion scenes take place in between the extended tedious discussions concerning the principles of Wulder. Actually, lectures concerning the principles of Wulder where Fenworth and Schope drone on with vague and pretty much worthless platitudes. Even the Sword of Valor gets preachy, spewing out random, cryptic messages that the characters mistake for deep, meaningful advice.

So, after all this fumbling about, it turns out that Chiril is defeated, but in the end, Bealomondore and Paladin organize a defense of the Valley of the Dragons against an invading force spearheaded by "The Grawl" and his force of shoergats. "Wait", I hear you cry, "what are schoergats"? I understand your confusion. After all, "shoergats" were not listed among the catalogued seven "high" races and seven "low" races that we were told were perfectly balanced against one another way back in DragonSpell, and adding a new race would change everything with disastrous consequences. But that was before we added meech dragons, minnekins, and grand parrots to the mix, so one more random race thrown in seems to be about par for the course at this point. Shoergats, we are told, are a race of flying creatures that love dragon meat so much and are so ferocious that they hunted dragons almost to extinction on Chiril. But when the big showdown between "The Grawl's" shoergats and Paladin's corps of dragon riders takes place, the shoergats are soundly defeated without any significant losses on the dragon side, and of course, the battle takes place almost entirely off-stage. In the end, "The Grawl" is defeated (and despite The Grawl being obsessed with killing Fenworth, he doesn't even get close to the wizard, being defeated instead by Bealomodore and his magic sword), the invading forces are defeated, and then in a handful of pages the entire fortunes of war change and Baardack is defeated. Tipper, through a bizarre and contrived succession law becomes queen of Chiril, and then Paladin shows up out of the blue to propose marriage to her. Making the Paladin marriage proposal even more bizarre is that through the book, the character who had spent the most time with Tipper was the artist-turned-hero Bealomondore. Mrs. Paul could have had a cliched, although slightly more interesting plot line where Tipper realizes that her infatuation with Paladin is based on nothing more than an immature girl's idealized fantasies and she is actually in love with the man who has spent time with her, who is mostly responsible for converting her to believing in Wulder, who stoood by and protected her, and who has grown from a callow youth into a responsible hero. But no. In Mrs. Paul's world, the idealized adolescent fantasies win out. After an entire book of tedium, all of the plot elements are wrapped up in the most contrived manner possible in about a dozen or so pages.

Basically, this is not a very good book, but this is not unexpected, because none of the previous books set in Mrs. Paul's Chiril/Amara setting are very good books. The sloppy world building, evidenced by the random addition of the shoergats, just shows the level of contempt Mrs. Paul has for the genre she has dressed her preachy pseudo-Christian lecture as. The characters who are supposed to be "colorful" like Princess Peg and Wizard Fenworth are annoying (and in Fenworth's case, come off as idiotic rather than eccentric). The characters who are supposed to be "inspiring", like Paladin, are horribly bland. The characters we are meant to empathize with, like Tipper and Bealomondore are generally unlikable or merely pathetic. The story is a fairly standard fantasy invasion story, only made unusual by the extreme incompetence of the good guys, and made tedious by the inclusion of heaping shovelfuls of didactic pseudo-Christian preaching. As usual, the Wulder described in the book seems to be a complete dick, despite the novel's continual attempts to talk about how loving and kind her is. Of course, he's not so loving and kind to the thousands of people killed, maimed, and wounded by the war he let fester. This book seems like it is singularly ineffective at conveying a message that would be of interest to a nonbeliever, and the deity described in the book is such a jerk that it seems to me that it would offend a believer. In the end, there is just not any audience that I could see to recommending this book to.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

Q: What would you get if you wrote a fantasy book filled with pseudo-Christian moralizing but left out anything resembling a real story?

A: You'd get the book DragonKnight.

The DragonKeeper Chronicles trudge on in this third installment featuring Bardon, a secondary character introduced in DragonQuest, the previous book in the series. The story moves at a glacial pace, filled with frenetic but pointless action that mostly has nothing at all to do with what little plot the book has, and which show more is periodically interrupted with bits of pseudo-Christian sermonizing that advocate a particularly passive way of dealing with life.

The primary problem with the book is that the plot is basically a haphazard collection of random coincidences strung together that flow by without the characters making any real decisions for themselves. The reason that the characters aimlessly stumble through the events of the book is that the religious message intended to be conveyed is clearly the idea that Wulder (standing in for God) has a plan for everything, and thus there are no coincidences, and the correct course of action is simply to trust in Wulder and everything will turn out okay. This particular piece of religious advocacy in favor of passivity results in a book in which the characters don't actually do much besides react to events as they pop up in front of them, and as one might expect, this makes for a fairly uninteresting story.

The plot of the book, such as it is, involves Bardon setting out on sabbatical for a year of solitude before he decides whether to dedicate his life to serving as a knight of Paladin. When he arrives at his designated sabbatical retreat, he discovers that two emmerlindian women, Granny Kye and her granddaughter N'Rae, and a minneken have taken up residence before him, and they have a quest that needs to be undertaken to boot.

"Wait", I hear you cry, "what the heck is a minneken"? Well, if you must know, it is a miniature race of beings that are somewhat similar in shape and size to a mouse that hails from the previously unmentioned Isle of Kye. This particular minneken, Jue Seeno, has been assigned as N'Rae's protector (although why N'rae needs a mouse-like protector is never really explained, and neither is how Jue was selected for the job). This, of course, runs counter to the assertions in DragonSpell that there are only seven high races and seven low races, and adding more races will somehow cause earth shattering disaster and signal the end of the world. But, given the introduction of the very humanoid meech dragons in DragonQuest, ignoring anything resembling continuity in world-building seems to be a common practice for Mrs. Paul. In short, what seemed like some clever world construction in DragonSpell turns out to have been just a convenient excuse for a plot MacGuffin, and was cast aside as soon as the MacGuffin was no longer needed.

Bardon, of course, cancels his plans to reflect on whether he wants to dedicate himself to Paladin's service, and instead agrees to help N'Rae find her long-lost father who was imprisoned by a spell cast by Risto that will expire and kill him when a particular comet reaches a particular spot in the sky. Apparently Risto would stop by and renew the spell keeping N'Rae's father in his enchanted slumber every now and then, but since he was killed in the last book he can't do that any more. Lest one stop and wonder why Risto would bother enchanting someone under a spell that he had to check back on periodically rather than just, say, killing them, Mrs. Paul throws in some random action to distract us, having Bardon fight a water snake and then a mountain lion before everyone heads out through the conveniently provided magical portal to a nearby city.

Once there, Bardon sets out to earn some money, and coincidentally there is a kindia breeder who needs several of the animals broken and is offering large sums of money to anyone who can. Like most other fantasy elements, the kindia, a sort of oversized horse with a sloped back and a temperamental disposition, are more or less dropped into the story as a plot device without any kind of foundation laid for their existence as an integral element of the fantasy world they inhabit. After Bardon spends a laborious day training a single kindia, it serendipitously turns out that N'Rae has a unique magical ability that makes taming the breeder's remaining stock a swift and easy process. The breeder, after some more plot extraneous action involving a kindia race, tries to rope N'rae and her special talent into his household by trying to get her to marry his son Holt. The characters kind of mill about randomly for a while, fighting random quiss or sea dragons when the novel slows down too much, getting arrested for stealing food for orphans, getting the orphans handed to their care as punishment, having Holt show up running from his creditors while trying to make passes at N'Rae and taking him in as a member of their crew because, as someone points out, they could use an extra strong body to help out on their quest, and he's handy. The strange appearances of quiss are set up as some sort of mystery involving vile experiments by the wizards Burner Stox and Crim Cropper, but this being a book in the DragonKeeper Chronicles, this foreshadowing never leads to any kind of pay off in the story. (In point of fact, despite heavy foreshadowing, neither Burner Stox or Crim Cropper show up in the book at all).

The characters continue to drift along without any real urgency, despite the supposedly tight deadline they are on. As with previous books in the series, there's no problem so urgent that one cannot take time out to sit around and drink tea and eat cakes, or have philosophical discussions about how great Wulder is, or stopping to paint pictures. (Granny Kye, despite being an older emmerlindian, isn't very wise, but has the special ability to paint pictures that reveal a person's inner self. as with most fantasy elements of the book, this ability is pretty much useless in the context of the story being told and provides almost no benefit to her or anyone else in the book, despite it being harped upon constantly). This is, as we are told repeatedly, because Wulder has arranged everything according to his plan, and if one is intended to succeed in one's quest, it will turn out okay for you (and I suppose, if Wulder wants you to fail, you're pretty much screwed). So the characters pretty much just wander vaguely in what they assume is the right direction.

Along the way, random coincidences are seen as the hand of Wulder. Stittiponder, a blind orphaned street urchin who hears the wisdom of Wulder via voices only he can hear who had been very briefly introduced as a friend of Toopka's in DragonQuest, pops up thousands of miles away from where he was living on the streets in Vendela. Regidor returns to join Bardon's quest, although he arrives in response to a summons from Dar. Bardon literally stumbles across a gateway that transports him from the far northern tip of Amara almost on top of Kale, which pulls her into the quest serendipitously, and then drags along the wizards Fenworth, Cam, and Lyll as well as Librettowit, Taylaminkaydot, and Toopka, all of whom are introduced to the story using this incredibly clumsy plot device.

One of the few characters who Bardon and N'Rae actively recruit to join them on their quest to free her father, and one of the few who has specialized skills that could help them, is the mapmaker Bromptotterpimdosset, but since it turns out that he isn't theologically pure, they spend some effort trying to get rid of him. This illustrates that any semblance of plot that shows up in the story is clearly of secondary importance as far as Mrs. Paul is concerned. The important part of the book is providing "correct" moral instruction to the intended young adult audience, and that "correct" moral instruction is basically this: don't make any plans, because God will make everything work out for you, and don't associate with anyone who asks any hard questions, because they might pollute your mind with bad thoughts. Bromp serves up some straw men for Regidor and Bardon to shoot down, and is then converted to following Wulder when a random coincidence happens, because, of course, there are no random coincidences, there is only Wulder's plan.

So, the good guys eventually wander around enough and find the enchanted knights they were looking for by accident and then, well, they don't do much of anything for a while (remember, nothing is so urgent that you can't stop for a long lunch with tea and cake several times). Having spent no time at all trying to figure out how to break the enchantment until they found the knights, they meander about the abandoned fortress where they found them for a while until the answer drops in their lap. By that time, both the Pretender has shown up to cause trouble (but not too much trouble, since the characters are all under Wulder's protection and thus cannot be harmed), and Paladin shows up for a deus ex machina moment and everything is wrapped up in a nice bow - including the sudden revelation that Bardon is the son of one of the freed knights, Kale is the daughter of another, and Bardon and N'Rae are cousins (which conveniently solves the clumsy love triangle that Mrs. Paul has half-heartedly set-up between Bardon, N'Rae, and Kale in a manner reminiscent of the clumsy resolution of a similar love triangle in Return of the Jedi).

With the knights rescued, the random non-threats stop showing up and everyone is reunited with their family members. And in a huge anticlimax the wizard Fenworth permanently changes into a tree and Kale is dubbed the new Bog Wizard to replace him. Having milked about fifty pages worth of plot into a 393 page book, Mrs. Paul finally stops preaching the virtues of wandering aimlessly through life and expecting God, excuse me, I mean Wulder, to fix everything for you and brings the turgid series of moral lessons to an end. With no real story, a pile of foreshadowing that never pays off, a completely random series of events, and a "moral message" that is pretty much a call to passivity, this book is definitely worth missing.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

It takes a certain amount of hubris or naivite for a fantasy author to name their book DragonQuest. After all, Anne McCaffrey more or less claimed that title with her 1971 Hugo-nominated Dragonriders of Pern novel Dragonquest. The name has also serves as the name for the SPI published DragonQuest fantasy role playing game, and a massively popular series of computer console games. In the case of Donita K. Paul and her Christian fantasy DragonQuest, the second book in The Dragonkeeper show more Chronicles following after DragonSpell and preceding DragonKnight, I tend to think that the title choice probably springs from a lack of familiarity with the fantasy fiction genre. This assessment stems from the realization that DragonQuest is not really a work of fantasy fiction. It is, in fact, a fairly didactic work of Christian advocacy playing a pretty poor version of dress up in fantasy clothing.

The plot of the novel is fairly straightforward. Having been thwarted in his efforts to acquire a meech egg by the heroes in DragonSpell, the evil wizard Risto acquires another one and instead of carrying out his Earth-shattering plan to create a new "low" race from it, he abandons that idea and instead hatches it so he can train the meech to influence other dragons to join his side. In the meantime, an unknown force drops a bunch of "Creemore spiders" on Vendela (which is where Kale and Dar have been training as freshly inducted leecents in Paladin's army) who wreck havoc just as Kale, with two new characters named Bardon and Toopka, is set to head off to Fenworth's castle in order to help raise the brand new meech dragon that hatched from the egg Kale and her friends saved from Risto in the first book. Along the way, Kale is wounded and poisoned by a Creemore spider and we are told she is near death. Because the story is told entirely from Kale's perspective, the drama of her recovery takes place almost entirely outside the narrative of the book. Essentially, the reader gets told "Kale is near death and in dire straits" on one page, and "Kale has been healed by Fenworth and out of danger" on the next, removing any possibility of dramatic tension.

The fact that Kale's recovery takes place basically off-stage presages a recurring theme in the book: any big, dramatic developments almost all take place off-camera, with the reader only told about them as a fait accompli after the fact. The expedition to hunt down the Creemore spiders and discover who sent them to Vendela, the assembling of an army to defeat Risto, the trickery behind the defection and return of the "good" dragons, and even the climactic battle against Risto's forces all take place out of sight of the reader, primarily because Kale was not there to witness them. While this preserves the purity of Kale as a viewpoint character, it was the author's choice to have Kale not present for so many of these events. As a result, the book has far less actual drama and tension than it should have. This might be understandable if the narrative path that Kale and her companions take had its own drama, but instead the reader is mostly treated to a slow moving series of moral lessons in which the pseudo-Christian fantasy religion is imparted to the reader. To a certain extent, at points it seems like Mrs. Paul forgot she was writing a fantasy novel, instead of a Sunday school lesson plan, as it seems like it was far more important to her to have the characters repeatedly talk about how they are powerless and worthless without Wulder (who serves as the fantasy world version of God) to guide and protect them and Paladin (who is the fantasy stand-in for Jesus) to tell them the correct way to properly worship and exalt Wulder.

Once everyone reaches Fenworth's castle and the meech dragon, named Regidor, is introduced, they emphasize the urgency of the mission to investigate the Creemore spider attack and stop Risto's meech dragon from influencing the dragons of the world to rally to the side of evil by spending a lot of time drinking tea, eating daggarts and mullins, and waiting for an accidentally quickened minor dragon egg to hatch. This does allow for some character development for the young doneel Toopka and the rapidly growing meech dragon Regidor. It turns out that meech dragons are basically humanoid dragons, based on the description given they look more or less like a scaly person with sharp teeth, sharp claws, and a tail. Given that they are intelligent, capable of speech, and seem to basically be people with some lizard-like affinity, one has to wonder why they are not counted as one of the seven "high" races, or one of the seven "low" races. One might suppose their rarity prevents them from being counted, but the story chips away at the rarity argument when Dar casually makes reference to a "meech colony" that was attacked by Risto (which really is odd, given that we have been told that meech dragons are so unheard of that the existence of the meech egg from which Regidor hatched was considered to be a once in a lifetime occurence). It also doesn't really make much sense that whether a paritcular race is counted as a race or not depends on how many of them there are given that Wulder (who we are told is the source of all knowledge in the fantasy land of Amara) is supposedly omniscient. I suspect that the reason may be that the seven high and low races may not actually be 'fantasy races" in the sense that most people who read fantasy fiction would be familiar with. In the book, after she returns to the village where she was the village slave before discovering her first dragon egg and being set free, Kale begins to consider the "marione virtues" that grated on her when she lived among them, and how each race displays different virtues that must be combined together for a harmonious whole. Although she has not yet made the connection explicit, based upon the didactic nature of the book, my guess is that Mrs. Paul is setting up a correpondence between each of the seven high races and one of the seven cardinal virtues, and between the seven low races and the seven deadly sins. In short, the reason that there are seven high and seven low races seems to be to fill out a spiritually significant checklist rather than any organic purpose in the setting, and thus the meech dragons are superfluous to that goal and therefore are not counted.

So after piddling around for a few weeks of afternoon snacking, the new minor dragon is hatched - who turns out to be a "laughter dragon" capable of making people feel mirthful. This, we are told, is going to be important on the upcoming quest. But, as one might expect in a book that consistently brings up random and supposedly important details only to drop them without any real explanation, it turns out to have no actual value at all on the quest. Dar shows up with the riding dragons, and after a brief fight with some mordakleeps and blimmets (that, as with much of the action of the book, takes place mostly out of sight, with Kale and Regidor providing magical assistance from miles away) the group sets out question to find the source of the Creemore spiders by camping far away from where the Creemore spiders live and cooking oversize mushrooms like steaks and other tasty meals. Interrupting the cooking scenes, Cam, a lake wizard shows up, and a beautiful woman well-dressed appears to Kale and claims to be her mother Lyll and tells her to keep her visits a secret. This is intended to set up a conflict in Kale, as she is encouraged by the beautiful Lyll to abandon her companions and the urgent quest of preparing lots of breakfast foods and run away to Risto's castle. The problem is that Lyll is pretty unconvincing - and Mrs. Paul seems not to even really want to make her seem tempting other than to describe how pretty her clothes are and have Kale think about how much she wants to have a family. But the Lyll presented in these scenes turns nasty so quickly that any amount of real dramatic conflict dissipates almost immediately, leaving the reader to wonder about Kale's sanity as she continues to consider running off with a woman who berates and verbally abuses her.

Of course, since the action is getting far too close to the pages, Paladin has to show up and direct Kale, Toopka, Bardon, Regidor and Dar to go find the renegade meech dragon and turn it away from Risto's service, leaving Fenworth and Cam to deal with the spiders. This also gives Paladin the opportunity to dispense some fairly offensive advice to the heroes as they head through the magical gate that will wisk them across the continent to where the evil meech dragon might be. Paladin stops each of the travelers to give them some personalized theological advice, and when he comes to Toopka, a child who has spent most of her life prior to meeting Kale as a homeless orphan living rough on the streets of Vendela, he chastises her for not being honest. There are times you want to reach inside a book and punch one of the characters in the mouth for being a complete dick. This was one of those times. The gall of taking a street urchin who had been forced by circumstances Wulder arranged to lie, cheat, and steal just to have food to eat and then chastising her for not learning a moral code that she clearly never had an opportunity to learn is simply staggering. And this callous, obnoxious, and distasteful figure is the Jesus analogue in Mrs. Paul's fantasy world. Paladin also requires Kale to set about hatching another egg, which he specifically selects as being particularly well-suited to help with the challeneges that will face her in her quest. It turns out to be a light dragon but, as usual, despite this build up, there is nothing particularly useful about having the dragon along.

One thing that makes Paladin's interlude with Toopka seem so odd is that through the rest of the book Mrs. Paul has the various characters espouse what can only be described as a theological doctrine of personal helplessness and worthlesseness. The characters repeatedly assert that they are incapable of accomplishing anything without Wulder's help, and that they cannot take any actions without Wulder's power and authority. This further saps any actual tension from the book, since it results in a collection of characters who don't do much of anything, and when they do, they always end up suceeding because Wulder is on their side. The structure of the book, since the purpose is clearly to impart "correct" theological lessons rather than tell an actual story, violates the basic rule of storytelling, since there is no actual conflict in the book that has any meaning at all. Of course, other than personal interviews with Paladin, it isn't clear where anyone is supposed to learn the wisdom of Wulder. There is a passing reference to the books of Wulder, although they are apparently so rare that they never heard of them in the village Kale was raised in, and when imparting Wulder's knowledge to her, neither Granny Noon nor Fenworth's personal librarian Librettowit make any reference to them. A person identified as a parson crosses paths with the motley band of travelers when they stop at an inn, and is supposedly something of a religious authority, but he requires Dar to argue in favor of Wulder's service before the other patrons will accept him as anything other than a useless appendage. This particular scene also highlights yet another weakness of the book: Mrs. Paul often doesn't even bother to set up a strawman to have her characters argue against, she just has one of the characters say the "correct" version of Wulder's teachings, and those who had been indifferent or opposed to Wulder's message generally snap into line immediately. In short, Amara is the sort of fantasy world where one can do the equivalent of quoting John 3:16 to nonbelievers and have them immediately see the light with no further convincing necessary.

Of course, this sort of conversion only works on the indifferent or the misguided. The heroes, being on the side of Wulder, are immune to the temptations of the forces of evil. The designated villains, being written as essentially insane, seem to be immune to Wulder's message. Once the heroes catch up to the villainous meech dragon, a female named Gilda, who has been spreading discord among dragons, convincing them to leave their family farms and join Risto's cause, she is completely unconvinced by Regidor's arguments in favor of serving Wulder. From a certain perspective this is understandable, since Regidor's arguments are completely unconvincing (probably because neither he nor anyone else in the book has ever had to do more than mouth some platitudes about how great Wulder is and the listener immediately agrees with them), but I suspect that Mrs. Paul intended for the reader to be impressed with the theological arguments between the two meech dragons and come to understand just how right Regidor is. Despite this, the book ends with Gilda still unconvinced that Risto is a villain, but imprisoned in a bottle and thus helpless. I guess in a world in which village slavery is acceptable, imprisoning someone in a bottle until they see the light counts as "rescuing" them. The reunion between Kale and the real Lyll Alerion is similarly unconvincing. (You didn't really think the beautiful but nasty Lyll was really Kale's mother did you? That would have set up an actual conflict in the book, and that is apparently to be avoided like the plague). Lyll makes some very weak justifications for leaving her only child in a village full of meriones to be their slave as opposed to, say, asking one of her good friends like the Wizard Fenworth or the Wizard Cam to take care of her. Or leaving her in the care of Paladin's followers in Vendela, or any number of other choices that would seem far superior to a childhood of slavery. The real Lyll is, of course, sweet and loving, but not as beautiful as the false one (at first, a situation that is rectified quickly). Kale is kidnapped in a last gasp effort by the forces of evil, and a wholly unconvincing temptation sequence lays out in which the false Lyll tries to berate and insult Kale into choosing her. One of the fundamental problems wth the book appears to be that Mrs. Paul cannot understand the thought process of a nonbeliever, and as a result resorts to unconvincing caricatures as opposition for her protagonists.

On the other hand, the problem may be that Mrs. Paul is simply not very good at drawing any more substantial than cardboard characters. Bardon, who is supposed to be difficult and unpleasant to work with, and whom Kale is required to take along with her when she sets out into the world, turns out to be so bland as a character that one frequently forgets that he is supposed to be a stiff-necked pain in the neck. The various wizards have what are supposed to be funny magical quirks - Fenworth changes into a tree if he stis still for a while, Cam drips water all the time, and Lyll gets older if she is sedentary and younger if she excercises - but they have little more than one-dimensional personalities. And this seems to extend to the setting itself. Most of the fantasy elements go little more than surface deep, and once the veneer wears thin, the fundamentally mundane nature of the world begins to peek through. The characters eat mullins and daggarts, but these seem to be little more than alternate words for doughnuts and muffins. Illustrating the skin deep nature of the fantasy element is the "beater frog", described in the obligatory glossary of fantasy terms as a "Tailless, semiaquatic amphibian having a smooth, moist skin, webbed feet, and long hind legs. Shades of green; no bigger thana child's fist; capable of making a loud, reosunding boom". As an observant reader would note, this basically describes this animal as "a frog that can make a loud boom". Once you knock the thin coating of fantasy names off, there just isn't much left other than a bunch of badly presented lessons in pseudo-Christianity that make Risto and the Pretender look like a much better option than the callous Wulder and the dickish Paladin. This sort of superficial reskinning of the mundane in an effort to create a fantasy reality makes one think that Mrs. Paul is not particularly well-read in the field of fantasy fiction, and merely chose this genre because it would serve to draw younger readers in and let her beat them over the head and shoulders with her religious message. The actual lesson a reader will probably take away from the book is that it takes more than renaming a collection of mundane world elements to make an effective fantasy setting.

In between didactic sessions of moral instruction, jusitifications for slavery, repeated protestations by the characters as to their own personal worthlessness, and dinners of renamed the story meanders along aimlessly until the big confrontation occurs. But Mrs. Paul puts limited effort into this aspect of the book. The big threat facing the heroes is the supposedly beguiling Gilda, and her enhanced ability to turn dragons away from working with the members of the "high" races and join Risto's army. This supposedly threatens the economy of Amara, as everyone supposedly depends upon their dragons for just about everything, but as with so many other fantasy elements of the setting, this is never really shown. Instead, the reader is told that the dragons are critical, without being given any real clear indication by example as to why this is so. And when Regidor and Kale confront Gilda, he does not seem to be swayed at all, and neither do Kale's minor dragons. The heroes raise an army of merione farmers to oppose Risto's forces with little effort, which is leavened by a collection of reinforcements. Once the heroes do go out to confront Risto's forces, their dragons seemingly defect to Risto's side, but this turns out to be little more than a ruse by the good guys to turn Risto's dragons back to the side of good (or, at least the side of Wulder, which I'm not sure is actually the side of good). But since we cannot have anything of importance happen "on-camera", Kale only finds out about the ruse after it is over and the good dragons have returned. The good guys also get the bulk of Risto's forces to desert by making the weather bad, although the desertion takes place, yet again, off-camera. Then, as the battle rages (off-camera again), Cam, Fenworth, the real Lyll, and Kale all go to confront Risto and the false Lyll (who turns out to be the evil sorceress Burner Stox). Cam and Lyll prove to be laughably ineffective, and Risto is eventually defeated almost by accident (but since there are no accidents in Wulder's world, it was all part of his design) in a fairly anticlimactic scene.

Overall, if one were looking for an interesting fantasy story, then DragonQuest, with its poorly worked out story and superficial fantasy setting is likely to be a major disappointment. Even if someone were specifically looking for a fantasy story with Christian overtones, picking up DragonQuest would probably turn out to be a disappointment since the story element is completely suborned to the didactic Christian lessons, and several of those lessons turn out to be fairly objectionable. The only people likely to actually enjoy this book are those who are already convinced of the rightness of the particular brand of Christianity that Mrs. Paul is promoting, and I suspect that those are not the people she intended to reach. In the end, the clumsy and pervasive preaching completely overwhelms a what little fantasy story there is and results in a book that is simply not a particularly enjoyable piece of fiction.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less