Submitted by Laura 
(Aug 03, 2002)Dragon fans, you're in luck! Dragon's Winter is a must read for you if your looking for something to quench your thirst for our favorite flying majesties while McCaffrey is between books.
This book can be misleading from its back cover summary. It isn't entirely about dragons, but there is plenty dragon "power" in there to placate anyone. The main character area is shared by a circle of characters: Karadur, the dragon, his best friend Azil, a Wolf, a Hawk, Tenjiro, and Semnet, the last wizard in this world. Distinguishing the main villians was a bit confusing until Semnet clarified all for us. You'll find that it's very easy to cheer for the non-dragon changelings and humans because everyone in this book is believable and 'human' in the metaphorical sense. I also liked the names of some of the characters, as bizzare as that sounds. They sounded Oriental, which was a refreshing change and interesting tool to use in the story, since the Chinese are big on dragons too.
I was a tiny bit put out over the fact that we couldn't really see into the thoughts of Karadur as often as _I_ would have liked. People may argue with me over that, but I personally would have liked to see the inner rage and pain Karadur was probably experiencing over his loss of his shapeshifting abilities and his anger towards his brother. You could tell he was -feeling- it, but I could not see it properly adressed in the book. Other than that, I thought the rest of the plot and execution of the story was wonderful!
One last argument. More like a well meant complaint to all fantasy writers out there: We've all read Tolkien at least once. Please try hard not to throw the name 'Thorin' surreptiously into your plots. And if you're going to use 'warg' like creatures in your story, please call them something else, even if they bear little resemblance to their evil wolfy cousins in The Hobbit.
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(15 ratings)
