What I’m Reading: THE DRAGON CHRONICLES

Dragons.

No other animal—real or imagined—evokes the same emotional blend of wonder and dread, combining the Serpent in the Garden, the miracle of flight, and breath of flame in one beast. So when I was asked to review The Dragon Chronicles short story anthology, the latest Future Chronicles offering, I said sign me up!

In these twelve tales of dragonly deeds, I found every kind of dragon I expected—and a few I didn’t see coming.

The most unique take on dragon lore had to be Kim Wells’ “The Book of Safkhet.” In Wells’ storyverse, telepathic dragons live in harmony with a humanoid race on a nearby planet to Earth. Dragons are teaching their wards to co-pilot their organic spaceships. Current events on the home planet force dragon and man alike to take to the stars. Using an interesting epistolary style and select Bible passages, Wells lays out a mind-blowing first contact story.

No humans allowed in Alex Albrinck’s short story “Transparency.” This old school fantasy is a dragon-on-dragon smackdown between the ice dragons and the fire dragons. In case you were wondering, ice dragons are shimmery, flying beasts with an affinity for water. Their fire dragon foes are cave-dwelling, fire-breathing, earth-bound animals who find water poisonous and lay in wait next to lakes to take down their airborne enemies. In a Romeo-and-Juliet lizardly retelling—with a diversionary discussion on the sexual habits of dragons—we meet Eirene, a fire dragon, with an unorthodox attraction to her age-old enemy. There’s a nice twist ending, too.

Chris Pourteau does it again in “Grey,” the story of an unlikely friendship between a young girl and the last remaining dragon on Earth. Told from the girl’s point of view, Pourteau takes his time contrasting the freshness of the young human with the ancient beast whose smile, “once full of shining, sharp teeth, only lonely sentries [remain], yellowed and worn down.” The girl has come back to ask a favor of her dragon friend and is frustrated by his answer. When in the thrall of Pourteau’s prose, the ending, although predictable, is nonetheless satisfying.

For a swing into dragonly humor, check out “Tasty Dragon Meat,” by KJ Colt. This is the tale of Nogdo, the modest owner of the Cut-Less butcher shop in the town of Bolopsy. In this world, dragons are killed by packs of hunters in the employ of the local lord. They take a few trophies from the corpse and leave the body for the Poop Scoopers (ha!) to clean up. Well, our friend Nogdo gets a taste of dragon meat and realizes he can make a killing on this low-cost, high-priced delicacy. But whatever you do, don’t feed it to the children…

That’s only four of the dozen stories you’ll find in The Dragon Chronicles. As with any collection of this nature, not every story will suit your fancy, but that’s the beauty of an anthology, isn’t it?

The Dragon Chronicles – a worthy addition to Samuel Peralta’s (growing) Future Chronicles collection of collections.

David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception, coming in May 2015.