Whenever I see talk about the ubiquity of dragons in fantasy, I’m tempted to scoff. As far as I’m concerned, there aren’t enough dragons in fantasy, and there never have been. Forget vampires, my pubescent crack-of-choice was always dragons (thanks, McCaffrey), and yet books with sympathetic dragons or dragons-as-characters were hard for me to find. Dragons only seemed to exist as nemeses, straw-lizards to kill.
I’ve compiled an annotated list of influences, some old, some new, some obscure, some incredibly well-known. Some wonderful, some… probably best remembered through the lens of nostalgia.
But all of them with awesome dragons.
Pigs Don’t Fly series, by Mary Brown (https://www.goodreads.com/series/41410-pigs-don-t-fly)
If you squint and tilt your head sideways, you can see this series’ fingerprints all over The Dragons of Heaven. This was one of my early introductions, way back in my wee-ickle days, to Asian dragons and the different set of tropes associated with them: human shapeshifting, pearls, cosmic guardianship, porcine ancestry.
Eon, by Alison Goodman (http://www.alisongoodman.com.au/e.html)
Every writer has suffered that moment of panic when she’s halfway through writing a first draft, and she picks up something to read for inspiration and realizes, “Oh, shit! This is so much like the thing I’m working on. Everyone is going to think I’m a dirty plagiarist!”
That was my initial reaction to Alison Goodman’s Eon. There are Asian dragons and politics, there’s a girl masquerading as a boy, and pearls play an important metaphorical role. CLEARLY it’s the same book! Except, of course, that they’re really nothing alike apart from a few thematic elements. Goodman’s book was a fun read at a time when I really needed Chinese dragon inspiration.
Just about everything by Robin Hobb (http://www.robinhobb.com/novels/)
I have a shameful thing to admit: I’m not into Hobb for her dragons. The dragons are there, and she has an interesting approach to them, but it took her a while to get to them. I’d have washed out if she hadn’t given me something to tide me over. She gave me something better. She gave me The Fool. I’m a complete Fool fangirl. I love the way he queers gender expectations, the way he forces Fitz to be a better hero than Fitz has any desire to be, and how he keeps popping up to meddle in other guises in other books. And he shares my obsession with dragons, so we can totally hang.
Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik (http://www.naominovik.com/temeraire/)
The dominance of McCaffrey and Pern cleared the field for a long time for any other dragonrider books, or so it seemed to me. I was therefore excited and grateful that Naomi Novik ventured into the lists with her marvelous Temeraire books. The relationship between the dragon Temeraire and his partner Laurence is one of my favorite romances in fantasy literature (shut-up. It’s a romance, albeit a platonic one). They challenge each other to learn, to grow, and to question society’s dictates regarding their roles and relationship with each other. They each make the other one a better person. How is that not a beautiful thing and a lovely story to add to the dragonrider canon?
Memoirs of Lady Trent series, by Marie Brennan (http://www.swantower.com/novels/memoirs/dragons/index.html)
This one is a bit of an odd duck for this list, because the dragons in Marie Brennan’s books are not sentient; they are natural (albeit wondrous) animals, and Marie’s approach has been to write a series of science-adventure tales in the style of a 19th century lady naturalist’s memoirs. And it’s brilliant. Brennan’s science is fun, and I’d happily listen to Isabella Camherst ramble on just about any topic. Sure, as a girl I would have given body parts to impress a McCaffrey dragon, but as an adult with a background in anthropology, it’s a treat to imagine that instead I could make it my life’s work to study them with SCIENCE!
Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton (http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/books/tooth-and-claw/)
As different an approach from Brennan’s on 19th century literary dragons as you are likely to get. Walton’s dragons are erudite, ambitious, and positively Trollopian. Anyways. They’re fun, their world is fun, everything about this book is… fun. If you like your fun slightly scorched and yourself wearing a fabulous hat while you devour it.
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5907.The_Hobbit)
I like reading aloud to myself, and I have done for as long as I can remember. Not every book, just certain favorites where the language is so rich and vibrant that it cries out to be verbalized: the opening chapters of Stephenson’s Snow Crash, just about any selection from Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, and the scene between Bilbo and Smaug in The Hobbit. I’d seen the Rankin/Bass animated movie as a kid, and I would sit in my bedroom and read the Lonely Mountain scene aloud, attempting to mimic the accents and timbre, a ten-year-old girl channeling the gravitas of an ancient god. I think that was my main disappointment with Tolkien. There was not enough Smaug. Never enough Smaug.
Fricken Anne McCaffrey (http://pernhome.com/aim/)
The true mother of dragons. The Khaleesi of Pern. I don’t even know what I can say about her. If you’re into dragons, you’ve read her work. If you’re into dragons and you haven’t read her work, what the hell are you doing here? GO READ HER NOW!
You’re welcome.
“What the Dragon Said: A Love Story,” by Catherynne Valente (http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/04/what-the-dragon-said-a-love-story)
I return to this piece every few months for a re-read (and yes, this is one of those things I read aloud to myself). The language is as rich and dense as high-grade chocolate, but filled with bits of yearning and pain and raw-hollow hunger. It’s a poem about dragons, but it’s also a poem about telling the stories bubbling inside you even when you feel inadequate to the telling. Every time I read it, I lose a bit of myself and take away something new.
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Alyc Helms is the author of The Dragons of Heaven, being published in June by Angry Robot Books.
For more information visit her website at http://www.alychelms.com/
Great article. Dragons ftw! And yes, McCaffrey introduced me to so much, back in the day….
To add four more dragons of awesome character:
The black dragon (aka Mayland Long) in RA MacAvoy’s “Tea With the Black Dragon”
Kalessin in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels
Balisan the Red in Helen Lowe’s “Thornspell”
Morkeleb the Black in Barbara Hambly’s “Dragonsbane”
Yes, yes, yes! How could I have forgotten MacAvoy?! Thank you for the additions to the list.