Dragons Wild

Dragon's Wild lives up to Asprin's tradition of well told but quirky stories that you can't help laughing at. It's less out-right farcical than Phule's Company and the Mything series, which means it worked better for me as a humorous read (I'm not really a fan of farce.) Dragon's Wild kept me laughing out loud.

If you are a critical reader, this is not the book for you. Other reviewers criticisms of exposition and weak story are legit. For me the characters, the feel of the Big Easy, the world, and especially the humor more than made up for that, but YMMV.

I enjoyed this book. It was not a farce like I am used to from this author. It was an interesting story about a young man who finds out he is a dragon when he graduates college. He is apparently a powerful near pure blood and so everyone wants a piece of him. This book was slow moving and a bit meandering but was somehow riveting all the same. I just had to keep reading to see how he was going to grow into his powers. It was well written as you'd expect from this accomplished author. Lots of interesting secondary characters. Lovely feel for New Orleans where the main portion of the book takes place. There are a couple more in the series and I will be reading them.

I got a chance to meet Robert Asprin at a convention back in the 80s, and he was awesome. I've very much enjoyed some of his previous works, and I really wanted to like this one, too. I wish I could rate it higher, but there are some major weaknesses in here, particularly the amount of tedious explanations (really, is there ANYONE who doesn't already know about law enforcement profiling?). It gets to the point where, when you see yet another explanation coming (and you will see them coming), you groan to yourself and start skimming. Actually, I would have appreciated some insight into gambling and odds, but but then suddenly an editor showed up out of nowhere and the one bit that would have been most interesting got skipped. Aw.

And I show more forgot how very sexist Asprin can be. I mean, he's not Heinlein bad, but lord, it's not good. I would say it's a nice candy sort of book, but the treatment of female characters smacks too much of adolescent fantasy.

Worst part, I bought all three in the series when I found them at Half-Price Books. So I'll probably give the next one a shot. Worst case scenario, it's a fast read. show less

To be frank, I was disappointed. I love Asprin's Myth series and I think it's really clever, so I was very excited to see that he had a series about dragons. The plot was engaging and new: Griffen, a recent college graduate who slid through school, goes in to an interview hoping to land a cushy job with his uncle only to find out that he is descended from a line of almost purebred dragons and his secondary characteristics will be kicking in soon. Since he will be powerful, many other dragons out there either want to recruit him or kill him, which causes him to flee to an illicit gambling ring (also run by dragons) in New Orleans.

And that's about where his being a dragon stops being important to the plot. For all that Asprin did with it, show more "dragon" could might as well have been a metaphor for a person who is in power. This, coupled with awkward dialogue (actual use of characters calling each other Little Sister and Big Brother regularly), some preachy conversations that have nothing to with the rest of the book, some very bad grammar that you think someone would have caught in the editing process, and not enough information/details to the characters to make you actually care about them made for a not-so-enjoyable read on my part. It goes very quickly, that's for sure, but if you're looking for higher quality, I'd say go somewhere else. show less

I was looking for books set in New Orleans in my library's catalogue and found this. Although I am not much of a fantasy reader I thought I would give it a try but I don't think I will be reading the later books.

Griffen McCandles has just completed his college years and has to find a job. He thinks his uncle, who supported him through school and is very well off, might be able to find him a place in his organization. However, not only does his uncle not want to hire him he tries to tell Griffen that he is a dragon. Griffen's parents, now dead, were almost full-blooded dragons and Griffen should be coming into some very strong dragon powers soon. Griffen thinks his uncle is crazy but soon believes that there is something to this. He goes show more to find his sister at her college and then he is approached by a friend who offers to hide him out in New Orleans. This friend, Jerome, says that their small group of dragons want Griffen to lead their illegal gambling operation. At least this gives Griffen a place to hide from the people who may be out to kill him.

I liked the New Orleans setting but not enough to overcome my dislike of fantasy. I can think of some people who might enjoy this series though so I would recommend it to dedicated fantasy readers. show less

I actually found this book to be, quite frankly, racist in the pure sense of the word. An entitled kid who slouches through college finds out he is actually a dragon. Suddenly he's the superior race and the rest of the book is concerned with others of a lesser race (half breeds, "quadroons," "octoons") constantly catering to him and providing him with a house, money, a business to run however he feels like running it, a hot chick, heck, TWO hot chicks to bed (at the same time!), and the whole world on a platter. This is all given to him because he was born of a "pure" race of dragons. It's like reading the autobiography of George W. Bush.

Very much not Asprin's best work. I actually double-checked to see if this actually was Robert Asprin's book, and I hadn't purchased something written by somebody else by accident.
Griffen has essentially everything going for him, and the main difficulty he encounters is just not that "difficult." He never had to really work hard at anything, and was sort of bland.
Half way through, the book starts switching viewpoint characters which was really annoying. It's fine to have multiple "main" characters, but that should be clear from the beginning, not just suddenly switching to the other character in the middle of the book.
Dialogue was iffy at best. There was never any real tension in the book, and no reason why the reader should root for show more the main character except for the simple fact that he IS the main character.
It was a reasonably entertaining read, in the same way that airport novels picked up in desperation are entertaining. But that was about it. show less