Lots of dragons from many perspectives with some good stories. The Dragon's Tale and Vici, a cut above. ( )

This is the first collection I've read in a long while that is all good or better. There isn't a stinker in the bunch! My favorites were:
Jonathan Stroud's "Bob Choi's Last Job": Bob Choi goes after a dragon who is hiding in human form, eating humans, and stacking their bones neatly in the alley. Dark and really fascinating.

Naomi Novik's "Vici": debauched Roman Antony is charged with murder. His sentence: to slay a full grown dragon by himself (which means certain death). But Antony is sly and clever, and things don't procede precisely as planned. A fun prelude to the Temeraire series (though reading that series is wholly unnecessary to enjoying this tale).

Cecelia Holland's "Dragon's Deep": Perla is a young woman in a medieval fishing village. After the local Duke takes all their supplies, Perla and a few of the bravest fishermen go in search of more fish. But instead, they find a dragon. Perla is the dragon's prisoner for some time, trading stories for fish and her life. At last, she finds people again--but discovers that dragons and humans are not so unalike.Good"

Tad Williams's "A Stark and Wormy Knight": A darkly funny bedtime tale as told by a dragon. Marvelous use of language and kennings.

Andy Duncan's "The Dragaman's Bride": a wizard is traveling through the mountains in Virginia when she comes across a dragon who invites her to dine. At his dinner table, she meets ghostly miners, imps, the devil's son-in-law, and a girl who went missing rather than be forcibly sterilized. The style is unique and took me a couple pages to get used to, but then I loved it. I want more of this world! ( )

A good anthology: a number of names called to me from the shop shelves, in particular [a:Diana Wynne Jones|4260|Diana Wynne Jones|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1193516584p2/4260.jpg]'s (as I had actually only gone to the shop to try to buy her latest book). In the event DWJ's story was slightly disappointing for its briefness and downbeat outcome - she seems so often to have a downer against mothers, painting them as strangling smotherers. [a:Naomi Novik|8730|Naomi Novik|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206646770p2/8730.jpg]'s story was a delight, showing a possible starting point for the Aerial Corps; and there were some good stories that took us away from the typical sort of fantasy dragon inspired by Western cultures ([a:Tanith Lee|8694|Tanith Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1218895130p2/8694.jpg]'s ice dragon and Andy Duncan's hillbilly devil-and-dragon-and-witch story). [a:Tamora Pierce|8596|Tamora Pierce|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1209044273p2/8596.jpg] was also someone I took note of from the cover and enjoyed, though I thought the story (featuring Kitten, a character from the Wild Magic sub-series of the Tortall books) was a bit overly pat in the ending.

Overall, lots of good stuff that kept me reading quickly and keenly. ( )

Charming collection of short stories featuring all manner of dragons and the people who come in contact with them. Among the authors who contribute are Naomi Novik, Gregory Maguire, Jonathan Stroud, and Tomora Pierce.

These stories are written for younger readers and many have a wonderful snarky way of writing. There is only one small questionably appropriate event in all of the stories. Many of the central humans are teenaged and some of the dragons are young. The locales for the stories are varied. Most are fantastic but two are more known - downtown Oakland and the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia. Some dragons are friendly and some are menacing and some communicate with humans.

Recommended for young fantasy fans. ( )

Overall, this was a decent collection of fantasy stories all centered around that favorite of fantasy beasts, the Dragon. As usual, with a collection of this sort, there are some really good tales and some really not-so-good ones. But overall I was impressed with the diversity and range amongst the stories and enjoyed reading stories by some fairly big name fantasy authors who to this point I had not yet read any of their other more well known fair.

If you enjoy short story collections in general, I'd rate this one as slightly above average. There was a really nice variety of styles and types of stories included in the collection. Not all of the stories are the set in what most would consider to be the typical fantasy setting. As a matter of fact, most of the tales manage to have a twist or two that put them firmly outside of the box of the ordinary. In many cases this worked great, but in several it was just plain odd.

All in all, I don't feel that I wasted my time on The Dragon Book and would recommend it to others who,like myself, enjoy a collection of short stories to shake things up a bit. ( )