Reviews for Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History

The average rating for Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-13 00:00:00 Amung Pa Rereading this book caused me to clarify some of my muddy thinking with respect to wish-fulfillment characters and stories and those that try to present the world as it should be, could be, might be with a little imagination and grace. The very far end of the spectrum is the so-called Mary Sue story, wherein the protagonist is the center of the universe just because the narrative voice tells us the protag is a special snowflake. Leading off down a different path is the idealized protagonist, which could be termed the Beau Ideal. In the hands of a great writer this character serves to show what humans could be, and as such he has a venerable history. Not starting with Castiglione’s Courtier as I’ve seen asserted, but farther back, and at the inspiration of a very strong woman: Eleanor of Acquitaine, who worked so hard to wrench the war hungry drive of feudalism into a semblance of the chivalric ideal because she got tired of stinking, sweaty men tromping with filthy boots into her fine rooms, blabbing exclusively of killing unruly barons and damned Saracens, to the exclusion of wit, history, song, and about anything else worth listening to. There’s a traceable line of these heroes, particularly in the hands of female authors, stemming from the Pimpernel, up through Peter Wimsey to Crawford of Lymond and those he inspired. That Beau Ideal is recognizable through his descendants—witty, well, read, courageous, seemingly immoral or amoral, but actually true to his beliefs. And he has beliefs, even if it is only in his fellow-man. I think of him as a descendent of Eleanor's vision, and in The Dragon Waiting John M. Ford gives us the splendid Dimitrios, the anchor to the story, the sign that though the world around the characters seems to be sick with disease, war, greed, ambition, and death, there is grace, even if as elusive as the echo from an unseen choir.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-15 00:00:00 Carl Stewart Wow. The Dragon Waiting is hard work: I can totally understand why some people disliked it. I read it with the Draco Concordans (a fan-written concordance for the book) at my fingertips, all the while conscious that I'm gonna have to read it again to understand it all. It's a subtle, deeply allusive book, requiring both knowledge (of history and other literary texts) and skill with interpretation (of logical implications and emotional ones). I can understand resenting all the work the reader has to do, though for me the need to work is what made me love this book so much. I don't know how to say all the things I think and feel about this book without simply quoting other people. The theme that touched me most deeply was that of trauma, and the Byzantine colonialism's comparisons to sexual assault -- it was very interesting to me that several key characters were Welsh and Scottish, given that theme and "real world" history. I was convinced to read this book by this post, really, which says a lot of what I want to say -- and in a wondrously unspoiler-ish manner, too... "This is a sneaky, sneaky book: a blood-soaked medieval fantasy; an elegant historical AU; a bleak, gritty political thriller; a witty Shakespeare fanfic; an intricate meta game full of buried jokes about Star Wars and Dracula; and a deeply serious and mature story about human damage (whether trauma or “chronic conditions”) and how we bear it, about suffering and grace." Quite possibly, reading that post to begin with is what allowed me to love this book so much. Going in unprepared, I might have given up, which is unfortunate.