Name: The Dragon In Lyonesse (Dragon)
ISBN: 9780812562712

Gordon R. Dickson

The Dragon In Lyonesse (Dragon)

Sarah Sammis

Back in the mid 1970s, Gordon R. Dickson took time off from writing science fiction to write a quirky fantasy about a modern day man trying to rescue his wife who had been transported to a strange medieval world. The only problem; the man was stuck in the form of a wizard's dragon! The Dragon and the George was a humorous aberration from Dickson's normal writing until 1990 when he turned the one-off into the "Dragon-Knight" series.

The Dragon in Lyonesse is the penultimate in the series and it lacks the humor and clever plot twists that the earlier ones in the series had (and none of the series can best the original). The book is yet another quest and yet another battle of wits against the "Dark Powers" but it reads like a reunion of old friends who are trying for one last moment of glory before retiring. Every character has to be reintroduced including their back-story and how they fared on previous quests. With a half dozen characters and locations to reintroduce the book upwards of a hundred pages to even get started on the quest.

The quest itself reads like Dickson trying to parody a Piers Anthony parody of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon (if one exists). The writing goes for cheap puns and absurd situations to the expense of plot and character development.

The Dragon In Lyonesse (Dragon)

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