Dragon Blood - Patricia Briggs

I should probably start by saying that I'm not a fan of fantasy novels. Generally, I think they're too weird, cliche and cookie-cutter duplications of one another. When I picked up Dragon Blood I figured I was getting more of the same. However, I was glad to find that it this was not the case or, at the very least, if it was I didn't notice.

First of all, Dragon Blood is a sequel to another book, called Dragon Bones, so the first few chapters are a little hard to get into unless you've read the first book (which I had not). However, the author does a pretty good job of making it readable without a whole novel's worth of story being potentially unknown. Author Patricia Briggs introduces characters that we're probably supposed to already know and gives them enough back story that we can get by without being totally savvy on the details of Dragon Bones.

The novel has most of the things that other fantasy stories have (wizards, magic, dwarves and, obviously, dragons) however, Briggs uses these things to add to the world she's created and it doesn't feel as though she's dropping them in randomly in order to meet the quota of crap that should be in a fantasy novel (*ahem*, Terry Goodkind).

One thing that's done very well is the narration; it switches between first and third person every few chapters to cover more of what's going on. I know that sounds confusing, but Briggs actually pulls it off very well. When the main character is telling you what's going on from his perspective you get more of a personal story, what the events mean to him. While the next chapter when things go to a third person view, it's as if the world itself is talking, as if the events that are being described are being described in relation to their effect on the world.

There's one part of the book where the main character is imprisoned and, to keep him benign, is kept on some mythical drug, in different chapters you get a sense of how the world looks to him and how he looks to the world while he's high. It's very interesting and done quite impressively.

What's nice about this fantasy, as opposed to some of the others I've read, is that the characters are human without sacrificing any of the imagination behind them. The main characters have their flaws; they aren't perfect. They feel things and they make mistakes, this seems to be a fundamental fault with some of the other novels in the genre.

There are a few characters that are kind of thrown in near the end that aren't developed very much. It could be that they were developed in the previous novel or simply because they don't play much of a huge role, but the lack of development doesn't really seem to work against the novel.

Another thing about this book is that it's more about the characters than the events around them. It's as if the events serve as an excuse to add to them more. Although, this is where the one thing I didn't like about the book comes into play. While the book's characters are fine and the plot is interesting enough, there are a lot of things that just seem anticlimactic. So much is built up before something happens and then finally it happens and you can't help but think, “that was it?” The author pushes how supposedly epic an event is going to be and it's over in a page-and-a-half and you kind have to go back to make sure that you didn't miss something because you were expecting so much more. This is especially true with the ending, so much is riding on the last few pages and you have no idea how it will end and then it just sort of ends, and that's the series' finale.

So other than the lackluster ending, the book is actually pretty good. Not just good for a fantasy book, but actually good, which is more than I expected. I actually found this book in the Fanshawe Library, among some other interesting looking books. I encourage you all to check out some of the things in the library on campus. There's some pretty cool stuff there.