***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star
The Dragon and the George
George R. Dickson
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: Jim Eckert is stuck in a go-nowhere university job, where politics keep him from the promotion he needs and a jealous colleague, Dr. Grottwold,
monopolizes the time of his fiancée Angela. Grottwold uses her as a guinea pig in his experiments with astral projection, sending one's mind to another point in space
and time. Something goes terribly wrong with his latest project, and Angela is transported - mind and body - to an unknown locale. Jim vows to follow her and bring
her home, but his transference doesn't go as planned. He finds himself trapped in the body of Gorbash, a dragon in a medieval world where wolves speak, knights-errant
wander the land, and magic is real. The dragon Briagh has found and captured Angela as a prisoner, since all "georges," as humans are known to dragonkind, are untrustworthy
- especially those who arrive out of thin air in the middle of the dragon caverns. Before Jim can free her, Briagh carries her away, bound for the ill-reputed Loathly Tower.
His girlfriend is now in the hands of the Dark Powers who are attempting to throw the balance of power in this world off, and Jim/Gorbash must stop them.
REVIEW: I bought this book, something of a fantasy classic, largely because it was the main source of inspiration for the animated film The Flight of Dragons,
a favorite of mine. They took more than a few liberties in the adaptation (as in little more than the names were kept the same), and I must say that I preferred the movie
version. Still, it wasn't a bad book. I admit it was a little hard to shake the movie influence when I was reading, but even if I hadn't seen the film, I think I would've
found the plot slow and jerky. The ending leaves it set up for a sequel, as in a few major plot threads were left unresolved. I know that there is a whole series of books
with Jim and the dragons, but I was still slightly miffed. No, I have not read any more books in the series, nor do I intend to.
You might also enjoy:
The Last Dragonlord (Joanne Bertin, Fiction - Weredragons' twin souls give them near-immortality and the ability to shapeshift into dragon form)
The Vlad Taltos series (Stephen Brust, Fiction - An assassin/detective uses a dragonlike jhereg as an assistant)
Dragon Keep (Janet Lee Carey, YA Fiction - A princess born with a dragon-claw finger faces the malevolent sapient dragons who ravage her kingdom)
Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger (Jeffrey A. Carver, Fiction - A starship navigator befriends dragons dwelling in hyperspace)
The Familiar Dragon series (Daniel Hood, Fiction - A murdered wizard's dragon familiar forces a bond with a reluctant human detective)
The Dragon Quartet (Marjorie B. Kellogg, Fiction - Elemental dragons and their human companions time-travel to save Earth)
The Halfblood Chronicles (Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton, Fiction - From hiding, shapeshifting dragons amuse themselves by taunting tyrannical elf lords and their human slaves)
Bitterwood (James Maxey, Fiction - Dragons have enslaved humans, but one dragonslayer resists)
Dragonriders of Pern series (Anne McCaffrey, Fiction - On the world of Pern, dragons and their bonded riders fight deadly Threadfall)
The Temeraire series (Naomi Novik, Fiction - Alternate-history Napoleonic wars feature dragon corps and sapient dragons)
Eragon (Christopher Paolini, Fiction - A boy bonds with a rare dragon's egg)
Testament of the Dragon (Margaret Weis, Fiction - Illustrated stories about a man who serves the last Western dragon)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - In a self-aware fairy tale world, a princess runs away from home to live with the dragons)
The Dragonback Adventures (Timothy Zahn, YA Fiction - A dragonlike alien takes a human host to save the rest of his species from annihilation)
The Flight of Dragons
(animated movie DVD, based partially on this book)
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