Dragon's Tongue
I finished reading this book two days ago. I’ve been procrastinating when it comes to writing about it because there’s not a whole lot I can do to make it funny. It’s a pretty standard fantasy romp that has been executed well. I found little about the story itself objectionable. The writing occasionally tries to be more clever than the author is capable of but it never gets painfully self indulgent. But just when I think there’s nothing to say about Dragon’s Tongue, I remember the introduction.
You see, Laura J. Underwood may have written a perfectly passable fantasy adventure novel complete with a wizard school, bardic songs, an overcomplicated cosmology, polyamory, and a demon. That doesn’t mean that David B. Coe wrote a decent introduction for it. You see, David comes across as a Nice Guy. The whole introduction drips with the pathetic adoration and self-loathing that defines nerd lust. Why, he’d rather you buy her book than his own. She’s the funniest person he’s ever known with wit and acid and my gosh, she’s just real keen. He emphasizes over and over again how she is his friend and how honored he is to be her friend, such that you can almost hear the tail end of the nasal whine in your mind.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe he doesn’t make sure not to wash his hands after hanging out with her so that later when he touches himself he can pretend he’s transferring her essence to his Staff of Power. But he’s a man who is paid to express ideas and concepts via the written word and that is certainly what he is conveying.
As for the Demon’s Tongue itself, it is the first of a trilogy. All fantasy has to come in trilogy form these days, sometimes in a trilogy of trilogies, or as I am fond of calling it, The Jordan Pack. The main point of view character is Alaric, a young mageborn guy who has been training as a bard and isn’t sure he wants to master magic. He quickly finds himself apprenticed to Fenelon, who is every good-looking rakish supermage you’ve ever read about. He has a far too patient girlfriend Etienne, and she has a hot young apprentice named Shona. Rounding out our cast is Vagner the music-lovin’ demon. Together they fight evil in the name of truth and light. Yes, even the demon, who by the end of the book discovers that feelings lurk in his dark demon heart and that with Alaric on his side he can overcome his evil nature.
As trite as it all sounds, the book isn’t completely predictable. Shona is set up to be Alaric’s love interest. She has no real weaknesses other than a fear of bees that doesn’t actually make any impact on any scene in the book. She is beautiful, intelligent, skilled, courageous, sexually-forward, and all around just a wee bit too perfect. So when the Big Bad throws a Death Bolt at Alaric, you know that she is going to jump between them and take the hit. And she does. In most novels, this would result in her delivering a sad speech about how sad she is that she didn’t get to bear our hero many fine sons before her death, and the hero hulking up and using the pain of his loss to destroy evil forever. Instead she crumples and Alaric goes unconscious from the strain of losing his gal after the last couple of weeks of hardship. Still, he saves the day in a round-about way. And Shona kicks her way out of the fridge and is still living so at least Alaric can’t spend the next two novels angsting about her.
I touched on it in the last paragraph, but I would say that one of the biggest faults of the book is that the female characters aren’t flawed enough. Let me revise that, the female characters’ biggest flaws are that they are attracted to the male characters who have normal flaws. Fenelon is hasty, loses his temper, tricksy when it’s unnecessary, and can be a huge pain in the ass in addition to being almost supernaturally charming and talented. Etienne has one moment of meanness when she keeps dissing Alaric for checking out her tits, which I have a hard time counting as a flaw, and she sleeps with Fenelon for some reason. That’s about it. Alaric is terrified of dark places and can be frivolous. Shona…. likes Alaric? As I said before, she really has no flaws beyond that. It makes the female characters feel shallow. To be fair, they are just supporting characters in the story, but it feels like opportunities were missed to make them feel more like real people.
But like I said at the beginning, I liked the book. The dialog is fun, none of the descriptions are overwrought, and Vagner is a fun point of view character. I’ll look for the rest of the series.
