The Dragon Book: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy

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 show more 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! show less

Lots of excellent stories in this anthology. The best one by far was Peter S. Beagle's "Oakland Dragon Blues", but that's not surprising since he's a fantastic author with a real knack for short stories. I was surprised by my second favorite, "The Dragaman's Bride", by Andy Duncan--I hope this author keeps writing and getting published.

Tamora Pierce's story was fun, especially for those familiar with her characters (and somewhat simplistic writing style); Gregory Maguire's "Puz_le" was also fun and reminded me a bit of Nina Kiriki Hoffman. The stories by Naomi Novik and Diana Gabaldon were light and amusing and rather silly, but I was a little disappointed in the stories by Jane Yolen, Tanith Lee, and Diana Wynne Jones--I always expect show more better from them. While I didn't really like Cecelia Holland's story, I enjoyed the writing enough to seek out some of her historical fiction, which is now on my TBR pile. I'll also be on the lookout for Sean Williams, with whom I'm not familiar but whose story was intriguing.

The worst story? "Bob Choi's Last Job", by Jonathan Stroud. I've occasionally thought of giving his Bartimaeus books a try, but this story convinced me to avoid them. I would recommend just skipping over this story, as it should not have been included in an otherwise well-written and enjoyable anthology. show less

Great collection of stories all with the dragon theme. Have to put this at higher level due to sexual innuendo of first story (where girl is captured by a dragon) and the gore of the Humane Killer ( where 2 rival odd-bod dragon hunters clash.) Surprisingly my favorite story was the Tamora Pierce one which is told from the point of view of a young dragon, but I did like the whole book as many of the stories are really novellas and all work on what you THINK you know about dragons, and then slightly twist them to a new point of view.

Last word first: A must-have for dragon aficionados and fantasy lovers. (4/5)
Description: Whether portrayed as fire-breathing reptilian beasts at war with humanity or as noble creatures capable of speech and mystically bonded to the warriors who ride them, dragons have been found in nearly every culture's mythology. In modern times, they can be found far from their medieval settings in locales as mundane as suburbia or as barren as post-apocalyptic landscapes-and in The Dragon Book, today's greatest fantasists reignite the fire with legendary tales that will consume readers' imaginations. (description from Goodreads)

My thoughts: If you read the listing of authors I've included below, you'll see the first reason I was excited to review show more this book. What a great collection of names! Some of my favorite fantasy authors are here, as well as a few I've been meaning to try out. My second reason is, well, how can you go wrong with a collection of stories about dragons? They're fantastic!

This collection definitely has a little something for everyone, from grandiose adventures to humorous, character-driven vignettes. There's a medieval maiden who falls in love with a dragon as well as a dragon living in suburbia. My favorite story in is the one by Tamora Pierce. Daine and Numair are back! My very favorite Pierce characters, back in an all new story featuring Kitty, their adopted dragon.

The Dragon Book would make a great Christmas gift for the fantasy lover on your shopping list. I'm also thinking of passing it along to my dad, who has a bit of a dragon obsession. Be careful though, because if you start reading it, you're going to want to keep it for yourself.

Authors: Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Cecelia Holland, Peter S. Beagle, Diana Galbandon, Jane Yolen, Tad Williams, Diana Wynne Jones, Gregory Maguire, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Naomi Novik, Jonathan Stroud, Kage Baker, Adam Stemple, Liz Williams, Samuel Sykes, Sean Williams, Harry Turtledove, Bruce Coville, Tanith Lee, Mary Rosenblum and Andy Duncan. show less

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 show more ([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. show less

The Dragon Book, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, is an all-original anthology of short stories about, well, dragons, from numerous well-known fantasy authors such as Jonathan Stroud, Diana Gabaldon, Naomi Novik, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Peter S. Beagle and Diana Wynne Jones. Given the range of stories about dragons from different cultures, it's not surprising that each of these stories represents a different type of dragon, or that each reader will like some stories more than others, depending on their favourite types of dragons. My own favourites in this collection include Kage Baker's "Are you Afflicted with Dragons?" in which the creatures infest the roof of a hotel; Peter S. Beagle's "Oakland Dragon Blues," about the show more traffic nightmare a dragon might inadvertently cause (I especially loved this story because for a time I lived a few short blocks from where the main action of the story takes place!); Tanith Lee's "The War That Winter Is," which posits a snow-bound world populated by small villages of people who are subject to sudden complete obliteration from a passing dragon's breath; Tad Williams' very funny "A Stark and Wormy Knight"; and Diana Wynne Jones' "JoBoy," in which the destruction of an area of Kent is explained. All of the stories are well-written, and the editors have done a good job of selecting them; anyone who enjoys fantasy will be happy with this book! show less

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 show more 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. show less