Dragons: The Greatest Stories
Martin H. Greenberg, editor
MJF Books
Fiction, Anthology/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Themes: Classics, Cross-Genre, Dragons
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Description
This anthology compiles classic dragon-related stories from many famous authors, from Anne McCaffrey to Ray Bradbury.
Review
Note to self: Stop buying anthologies that aren't compiled by Bruce Coville. It doesn't matter if it's in the discount section. It doesn’t matter
what’s on the cover. It doesn’t matter what the theme is. Just stop buying them!
How bad was it? A few of these stories didn't even have dragons in them. Merely mentioning the word "dragon" shouldn't be grounds for a story to be
included in a dragon anthology. When I buy a book about dragons, I want to read about dragons, not the metaphoric “dragon within” or a misinterpreted
pseudo-dragon. Once again, as so often happens to anthologies in my experience, this seems to be a case of the editor compiling a list of prominent
names rather than a list of interesting stories. It perpetually puzzles me how authors who write good books can come up with such boring short stories.
It also puzzles me that children's author Bruce Coville almost invariably finds intriguing stories to fit his themes, regardless of whether the author
is a big name in the industry, while books like this, which should be able to draw on a much bigger pool of works by theoretically more talented
writers (at least according to sales figures), seem hard-pressed to find anything worth printing. I liked one, maybe two stories in here. The rest
varied between merely average to painful wastes of my time.