Court Black
Dragons.
Dinosaurs, nightmarishly re-imagined. Fantasy’s Six Million Dollar Dino-built bigger, stronger, faster, meaner. Better. A Jurassic Park bogeyman; a spook story mommy dinosaurs tell to scare their babies, of big flying reptiles, covered in scales like lizardskin china, maws glistening with killer enamel, eyes twinkling with attitude, menace. Possibly fire-breathing. A predator. The top of the food chain.
Then people hit the scene. With their enormous egos, their misguided conceptions, and their fervent belief that they wear the ruler pants, proclaiming themselves top of the food chain. Ruler of the Universe. It’s our world; everything else is just a peasant groveling before our throne, basking in our glory. Dragons are fearsome, yes. But they’re beasts. Mounts. Like a pony. Only a hell of a lot scarier.
So we tame them, raise them, nurture them. So we can ride them. Like nobility. Like Dragon Lords. The biggest, scariest predator in the kingdom, and we put it between our legs. Like straddling fantasy’s ultimate weapon of mass destruction, a one hundred megaton nuclear reptile. Only a bad man could ride such a bad beast. As far as substitute penises go, dragons can’t be beat.
And dragons allow this. Allow being dominated, ridden. Like an obedient and compliant pony, happy and content, domesticated and mostly harmless, a gift you’d give your eight-year old daughter because she’s screaming: I want a dragon. Most dragons happily submit, yearning for a pat on the head, or an encouraging word, even though they’re often intelligent, self-aware, and rational. Some speak, others communicate telepathically. Some demonstrate immense brainpower, enough to humiliate a Harvard law student. Others speak like they’re channeling Jane Austen.
So why allow themselves to serve as a mount for some vainglorious yahoo, some Dragon Rider? Why allow themselves to be treated as inferiors? Are they good-hearted, or moved by a strong moral fiber? Or maybe it’s because of their deep friendship with the rider? Really. It’s friendship? When’s the last time you let your best friend ride on your back, while you carted them around? It’s fantasy’s magnificent mystery, a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. Unanswered.
Until now.
Stephen Deas shatters this mystery, sledgehammering the dragon mythos into fragments, in his awesome new novel The Adamantine Palace. Vicious, predatory dragons. Equally unpleasant humans, driven by personal agendas. Court intrigue, thick as tar, and just as black. A novel less about good and evil, and more about bad and worse. About who’s the greater monster. Dragons. Or people.
Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series has been the recent standard bearer for dragon-themed fantasy. Part Napoleonic war story, part travelogue, Temeraire is all buddy picture, the touching story between a boy-or a former naval officer, in this case-and his friendly, talking dragon. It’s generally happy, and leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Unlike The Adamantine Palace which crushes the necks (and hopes) of good dragons everywhere under its monstrous talon, stomping them repeatedly until their black swollen tongues loll from their crushed skulls, before finally urinating on the aftermath. It’s the anti-Temeraire, a novel where the dragons finally get pissed off, and do something violent about it. And it’s a revolution, an uprising in which Deas seizes the dragon mantle from Novik, becoming the new standard bearer. There’s a new sheriff in town. And his name is Stephen Deas.
The characters are fantastic, multi-faceted and morally complex. It’s not good versus evil; there is no good. There are no angelic choirboys here, no innocent doe-eyed farm boys. There’s only the most powerful, the rulers of the land, the ones with Machiavellian agendas, the ones looking out for number one, the self-serving. The kings and queens; the princes and princesses. All of them cutthroats and backstabbers. Not since George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire has court intrigue been so deliciously wicked, so deliciously fun. The Adamantine Palace is about power. And those who struggle for it. Who lie for it. Who kill for it.
Prince Jehal shines as one of the book’s prime movers. He’s fratboy arrogance smothered in malice, a Teflon bully, smugness to a nauseating extreme. The character you’ll love to hate, the one who’ll have you begging for karmic justice, praying for it. Hoping, desperately, for fate to depants the twit. To expose his vulnerability. Just so you can savor its sweet taste.
Stephen Deas shakes up the dragon mythos wonderfully in his seismic, Richter-scale-popping novel, The Adamantine Palace. These aren’t your father’s dragons. These are the dragons your mom warned you about, the ones lurking in the shadows, doing bad things. Horrible things. These are the predators; the ones that floss with velociraptors. Unapologetic. Vicious. Intelligent. Unstoppable. And they might not even be the biggest monsters on the block. That distinction may be reserved for the people that ride them.
One of the best fantasy books of the year.
Computer geek, mathematician, philosopher, blogger. Happily married, father of one. Always exhausted. You can read more of my reviews at Blood of the Muse.
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