Rage of the Dragon: Book Three of the Dragonships of Vindras by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

I have a review copy of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Rage of the Dragon. I was excited to get it because I enjoyed Shadow Raiders: Book One of the Dragon Brigade so much.


I have not read the previous two books in this series, but it is a testament to how good this book is that not only can I come into the story at book three and I love the book, but I am ordering books one and two for myself so I can see how these great characters got to where they are now.


There is a short prologue where children are listening to the tale of our heroes and heroines around the fire told by one Farinn the Talogroth.  It is a well beloved tale that they can recite themselves. They run off to play act that they are the characters. This is such a nice framing device. However, by the end of the book I had forgotten about it and as people were dying left and right and I was stunned.  It would have been nice to remember that it probably all comes out alright in the end. Then again, this is a projected four book series and perhaps it doesn’t. Yikes!


The Dragonships are a wonderful creation. These wooden ships are inhabited by the spirits of real dragons who can be called forth in times of need to sail the ship or enter full dragon form and battle foes. The only indication during peaceable times that the ship is inhabited by these dragon spirits is a set of glowing eyes. Our ship is the Venjekar and its dragon is the Dragon Kahg. He has a rather dour personality, and is very ambiguous in his liking for the humans he sails with.

Our hero is Skylan Ivorson, Chief of Chiefs of the Vindrasi people. He is brash, brave, and ready to fight. I can tell from what is mentioned of the past that his character has undergone quite a transformation. Even in this single book, his character learns many hard lessons and becomes truly heroic. He gains wisdom, judgment and compassion with every page.



He has just finished a huge battle in the previous title, and he seeks to get home to his people to recover and to save them from a disaster he sees in a vision. He serves the warrior god Torval and his prayers and communications with his god are sometimes rewarded and sometimes not.



Our heroine is Aylaen, the Blade of the Goddess Vindrash. Chosen for this task over her murderous sister Treia, she wields it reluctantly at times but with honor. She is also a Bone Priestess who can call forth the dragons that inhabit the Dragonships. Over the course of the story she becomes a tough warrior and the love of Skylan. Their story is wonderfully romantic, their road not an easy one.



The gods here are real and they fight a hard battle between themselves, and with a dangerous new god who is attempting to destroy the older weakened gods. They are able to help the humans by sending visions and sometimes massive creatures like the kraken to do their bidding. The Dragonships have alliances as well. Some are with the old gods, some with the new.



There are great side characters. The narrator Farinn is a sixteen year old boy who would be a bard rather than a warrior. There is Acronis, a legate who has lost everything but he stays with Skylan and helps keep him temperate. A strange shape changing boy named Wulfe claims to be the grandson of the Queen of Faerie.

On the villainous side we have Skylan’s devout and dastardly cousin Raegar who would be emperor under the new god Aelon, his lover the traitorous yet oddly sympathetic Treia, and the new and increasingly powerful god Aelon.



Rage of the Dragon is the story of their efforts to get home, to bury a friend honorably, and to please the gods that they worship while fighting against the gods and their followers who seek to destroy them.



The world itself is at stake as Aylaen and Skylan seek the five bones of the Vektia dragon. Finding these will summon a power to the world that may destroy everything.



This is one of my favorite books this year. It is a great adventure, a sea story, rousingly romantic and I cannot wait for the final volume. Luckily I have the two previous adventures Bones of the Dragon and Secret of the Dragon awaiting me.

Shadow Raiders by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes

Shadow Raiders is the first book in a new series by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes which is set in the world of Aeronne, where continents are islands floating on gaseous cloud masses called The Breath.

Shadow Raiders is a grand adventure with spies, assassins, dragons, demons, a religious brotherhood and a Cadre of the Lost, all seemingly working towards and against the same goals at once.

Mysteries abound. A Master Assassin guards a pewter tankard and kidnaps it's impoverished maker. One hundred nuns are brutally murdered, their bodies all but devoured at a remote abbey. Someone called the Warlock distracts a powerful priest at just the right time. There are hints that all magic could be destroyed as if it never existed in the world.

At the heart of the novel are a wide array of characters.

Henry Wallace, the assassin, dotes on his wife and soon to be born child.

The grumpy priest Father Jacob misses nothing in his investigations. Something of a bad tempered Columbo, perhaps.

Brother Barnaby, my favorite character, is a humble monk whose mission in life is to serve God and Father Jacob. He trails after Jacob, blanching at the terrible sights he sees, yet he faithfully records everything on his portable writing desk. He is an extraordinary healer and his compassion for all things is unparalleled.

Rodrigo, who at first seems like comic relief, turn out to have quite a bit of depth.

At the heart of Stephano's life is the tragic story of his parents who were unable to find even a moment's happiness. His father executed, his mother a cold calculating spy, Stephano longs for:

"...the love of all that is holy, just give me a straight up, stand-up sword fight! I hate court intrigue and all the closet-hiding, eavesdropping, secret-liasoning, lying and manipulating, who's-watching-who bastards that bow and scrape and simper as they slip arsenic into your claret. You can't tell your friends from your enemies from one day to the next. What the hell is wrong with you people?"

Practical Stephano, former captain of the disbanded Dragon Brigade is truly surrounded with a Ludlum-esque amount of intrigue at every turn. It seems that everyone he knows sees the intrigue or is involved in it. Stephano looks for the obvious explanation that never comes.

Volume one of the Shadow Raiders presents a rich world, great characters, and plenty of action. Here's hoping the sequel is well under way.

Shadow Raiders will be published by DAW Books in May 2011.

Margaret Weis on the web: Margaret Weis Productions (Where they describe Shadow Raiders as a military fantasy, but I would call it action, adventure, romance!)

Margaret Weis on wikipedia with a bibliography of her work.

DAW Books

D.O.A. Recommends Red Knife by William Kent Krueger

The powerful eighth book in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mystery series opens with a young Anishinaabeg warrior preparing for his first war party. This traditional scene and the fear and ultimate triumph the boy feels over his foe leads the story into modern day tensions where rules and transitions to manhood are not so clear cut.

A group of young men who call themselves the “Red Boyz” defiantly take the name of Ojibwe war chiefs when they join the gang. Led by Alexander Kingbird “Kakaik”, they stand together against increasing hatred in the small town where they live, that hatred fueled by the death of a daughter of a wealthy businessman.

Cork O’Connor, former sheriff, now a PI, often walks a fine line between his Ojibwe heritage and his white heritage. In Red Knife, he is challenged to choose sides. For his family’s sake he tries to stay out of the oncoming battle but he cannot escape it, he is forced to fight.

I find his character to be so interesting for his deep spirituality. He mixes Catholicism and Ojibwe mysticism as if they went together naturally. I love the way he cares deeply for his family, especially his children. I have found his wife Jo a little hard to take in the past, but here she finally seems to soften.

William Kent Krueger spotlights so many other relationships in the book as well, husband/wife, parent/child, friendships, communities such as the Red Boyz and the tribal elders and how they interact. There is so much raw emotion everywhere in the book, and yet everyone on the surface tries to portray utter calm. That keeps the reader on edge, just waiting for dozens of things to boil over, and boil over they surely do.

Without spoiling the ending, I will say it could appear that this might be the end of the series. I’m sure there are many more Cork O’ Connor stories to tell, especially since he has made the choice to stand with one side of what can only be an ongoing conflict.

Discussion Questions for Red Knife (added 3/26/2013)

Discussion Questions for Red Knife by William Kent Krueger

 

1.      How does the prologue describing the attack on an unsuspecting enemy tribe tie in with the rest of the book?

 

2.      Could there have been a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the Red Boyz and Buck Reinhardt or was violence inevitable?

 

 

3.      What makes Cork decide to join in on the attack on the Latin Lords?

 

4.      Although that attack appeared to be successful, will the drug lords really stay away?

 

 

5.      Why does Cork leave his guns with Henry Meloux?

 

6.      What is Henry Meloux’s role in this novel?  If you have read other books in the series, is his role the same or does it change over time?

 

 

7.      Why do the Anishinaabe trust Cork?  Do the Caucasian characters trust him?  Why or why not?

 

8.      How does Cork balance his deep Catholicism with his Anishinaabe beliefs?

 

 

9.      William Kent Krueger adeptly focuses on relationships such as husband/wife, parent/child, friendships, and communities such as the Red Boyz and the tribal elders.  Discuss some of these relationships and how they affect the fates of the characters in Red Knife.

 

10.  Does the school shooting at the end of the novel tie in with or reflect the situation in the prologue or other incidents in the novel?   How?  Was this event foreshadowed in any way?

 

 

11.  William Kent Krueger has said that Red Knife was inspired by the violence of the Red Lake Minnesota school shootings:

“Red Knife is a book about violence, which is something I've been thinking a good deal about over the past several years. In March of 2005 on the Red Lake Reservation in northwestern Minnesota, the worst school shooting in this nation's history up to that point in time occurred. But it wasn't the first fatal school shooting in Minnesota. Two years before that in a small town west of the Twin Cities a high school student shot one of his classmates to death. These tragedies disturbed me greatly. And I began to reflect on violence in our culture and in other cultures and have become convinced that, despite all our lip service about being a peace-loving nation and people, we have perpetuated a belief system that encourages violence as the most legitimate response to threat. Red Knife was the result of all that rather grim rumination.”

12.    How does the violence that permeates the story of Red Knife reflect the violence of the Red Lake shootings?


Author background and bibliography added 3/26/13

Author Background William Kent Krueger: Red Knife

William Kent Krueger was born November 16, 1950 in Torrington, Wyoming.  His family moved around frequently in his youth.  He went to Stanford University and participated in protests which got him kicked out of school.  He worked as a logger and in the construction industry.  During these years he wrote articles for magazines and newspapers.

He met and married his college sweetheart Diane and moved to St Paul, MN in 1980.  Kent began writing short stories and found that he wrote most effectively in a notebook at the St Clair Boiler.  It was there that he also wrote his first novel “Iron Lake.” 

Part Irish, part Anishinaabe/Ojibwe, Cork O'Connor is a Chicago policeman who returns to his hometown of Aurora with his lawyer wife, Jo, and their three children to take a job as sheriff.—Iron Lake

William Kent Krueger travels with fellow authors Ellen Hart and Carl Brookins as the Minnesota Crime Wave.  Together they have produced two anthologies of short stories by Minnesota authors: Silence of the Loons and Resort to Murder.  The Crime Wave also hosts a mystery program on CTV-15 called Minnesota Crime Wave Presents.  They interview local authors, discuss mystery writing and mystery novels.  Visit the Minnesota Crime Wave at http://www.minnesotacrimewave.org/index.html

The Cork O’ Connor Novels

Iron Lake                1998

Boundary Waters    1999

Purgatory Ridge     2001

Blood Hollow       2004

Mercy Falls           2005

Copper River         2006

Thunder Bay          2007

Red Knife             2008

Heaven’s Keep     2009

Vermillion Drift      2010

Northwest Angle     2011

Trickster’s Point    2012

Standalone novels:

The Devil’s Bed 2003

Ordinary Grace   2013

William Kent Krueger’s Web site:     http://www.williamkentkrueger.com/index.html