Series: Book 1 in the Dragonmaster trilogy series
Rating: **
Tags: EN-Fantasy, Lang:en
Summary
In
Dragonmaster: Storm of Wings, Chris Bunch moves up a
notch from being a competent fantasy storyteller to adding
something new to the stock assumptions of his genre. What he
adds to a fairly conventional story of a young man making his
way in the wars of fantasy kingdoms is some real thoughtfulness
about the cliché of dragons as weapons of war. Hal Kailas
always wanted to fly and works for a travelling dragon show as
dogsbody and ticket seller to get some limited training in the
art; warfare breaks down a stratified social system enough to
give him the chance to make something of himself if he survives
long enough. What Bunch has done--and it would be an obvious
enough idea had anyone developed it this thoroughly before--is
map, quite precisely, his knowledge of WW1 fighter aces over a
fantasyland context; Hal is instrumental in the shift from
using flight as a way of scouting for infantry to flight being
a field of combat in its own right, with both sides doing their
best to achieve command of the sky and pilots acquiring their
own quite special rivalries and esprit de corps. This is not a
deeply subtle novel of character, but it is nonetheless
thoughtful about war and the experience of war.--
Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable
edition of this title.
