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Battledragon | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Christopher Rowley | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Bazil Broketail | Bazil Broketail, A Sword for a Dragon, Dragons of War, Battledragon, A Dragon at Worlds' End, Dragons of Argonath, Dragon Ultimate | ||
The witches who advise the Emperor have caught wind of a new plan of the Masters'. They hope to turn a kingdom in the dark southern continent of Eigo into warlike fanatics through the resurrection and control of an ancient prophet, He Who Must. Even worse, they are using the remote location to develop brand new weapons, devices that could slaughter even the well-trained and disciplined legions of Argonath. The Empire of the Rose has no choice but to send two legions to the heart of Eigo in order to destroy the weapons and their makers. The journey will be long and dangerous, and there is no guarantee they will be in time.
Right from the start this book left a bad, bad taste in my mouth. I found the very premise to be wrong, to the point I was actually offended. The witches state we must destroy these new weapons and the knowledge behind them not so much because they will make the Masters' armies too strong to resist, but because these weapons are only the first, primitive forms of a whole new technology that leads inevitably to a world's destruction. If the knowledge of how to make these things is allowed to take root and spread, it matters not whether the Masters hold them or the Empire, the world will be destroyed within a few centuries.
But this is effectively saying that the scientific and industrial revolutions are bad things. Technology is evil and must be prevented from getting a foothold in society. This is a view I do not agree with and would love to argue about. It totally disregards the effect of people able to hold themselves back. Just because the world can be destroyed at the push of a button doesn't mean it will be, any more than knives at the dinner table inherently mean there will be a stabbing. The characters and the book, and persumably the author, seem to believe that people cannot hold themselves in check, and that our own world cannot possibly sidestep its own destruction. And this is genuinely offensive.
The way Rowley handles these new weapons are depicted. First of all, he tried to hide the fact that is guns that are being developed, mostly be simply referring to them as, "the weapons" or sometimes, "the new weapons." (I don't feel badly about revealing this - it was pretty obvious not only thanks to the hints Rowley let drop but because guns were the weapon most able to destabilize a sword-and-sorcery world.) Secondly, once they were put to use they were all wrong. They were shooting at the Argonathi from a mile behind the lines! Even if the guns could be made that powerful, the stone ammunition would have shattered upon launch! Some of the balls were exploding into shards as they struck, but others just plain exploded, meaning they also developed percussion caps! And never do the "fanatical" and "undisciplined" enemy rush things and cause a cannon to explode in their faces. And remember, this is version one!
The story itself was also badly flawed. The book is essentially a quest tale. This is when people start at one point and must reach a certain place where they will find a certain item, fight the villain, or do something special, but most of the book is about the journey along the way. This is exactly what happens in Battledragon. There's a hundred pages or so showing Relkin meeting his newest Dragon Leader (another payed commission buffoon), another episode of the rivalry between Bazil and the wild Purple-Green, and the troops preparing for their next expedition. The next two hundred or more are spent on the trip down to Eigo and then into it! There's plenty of perilous encounters with hostile populations and wildlife - including dinosaurs, for crying out loud - but they're all secondary to what I constantly thought should have been the plot. That is, what made them embark upon this journey in the first place! None of it matters until they reach their destination.
If there was anything good about the story, it was that Rowley's general style continues to improve. By now it is almost contemporary. The book also ends with a kind of cliffhanger. The story is complete, but there is a major thread left that must be followed in the next book.
But really, it isn't enough. There's nowhere near enough positives in this story to ofset the grievous negatives. At times I was staring at the page in naked disbelief, astonished that Rowley would actually try to pass a particular plot point on his readers.
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