The Dragonhenge series, Book 1 Bob Eggleton and John Grant Paper Tiger Fiction, Fantasy/Picture Book Themes: Dragons, Epics ****
Description
Long before the rise of Man, the universe was formed and populated by dragons. They have long since faded to memories, their songs and stories lost, their great works
demolished by the ravages of time... except for these eight tales, kept alive by the last dragon. This book features illustrations by Eggleton and Grant.
Review
As "illustrated novels" go, this was pretty good. I've had bad luck with them in the past, as they all too often try to tell a larger story than their page count
allows. This, being a collection of legends from the days of the dragons and not a story arc of its own, works better. The stories are rich with the fluid imagery and
epic grandeur of mythology, though they do get a little repetitive in telling their tales. I liked the illustrations, too, even if some of them weren't exactly in synch
with the stories they appeared in. Dragon lovers should keep an eye out for this one. (I recently saw a sequel on the shelves, but budgetary restrictions keep me from
deeper investigation. A sequel seems unnecessary, though.)
Long after the dragon race and their inheritors, the chimps (who called themselves humans), rose and fell in that manner of all organic civilizations of the galaxy,
the stardragons live on, exploring the vastness of the universe. Created independently by various races, yet somehow the same, these great spacefaring machines with
conscious thoughts turn their ancient minds to mysteries no organic mortal could comprehend, seeking to understand the source of the seeds of life that are found
everywhere yet seem so rarely to take root. Their quest leads them beyond the Milky Way to the Birthplace, and perhaps beyond the end of the universe itself.
Review
Like Dragonhenge, this is an illustrated novel, with many pictures accentuating the text. Unlike the previous book, this was a single story arc, told on such
a vast scale and with so many tangents into quantum probabilities and intergalactic distances that it felt overwhelming and a trifle boring. There were no individual
characters as such, and while I understand that the stardragons, with their shared and duplicated memories, were essentially without individuality, I happen to be an
individual organic life form trying to read this story, and I tend to do better when I have someone to relate to. The pictures were bright and imaginative, but they
became repetitious, without the wide range of settings and dragons represented in the previous books; dragon-shapes soaring against bright cosmic streamers of light are
well and good, but after a while I was hoping for something a little different, and I rarely got it. I suppose I just preferred Dragonhenge's many myths to this
book's long trek across space and time to discover that the meaning of the universe was so basic that even inferior organic life forms innately understood it.
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