DragonLight 3: The Bad Points and Conclusion

All books have weak points, at least for some readers, and Donita K. Paul's DragonLight is no exception. However, the matters I'll raise probably won't be an issue for most people. (The fact that we never get the line, "Everything you always wanted in a dragon--and less!" notwithstanding. I hope that's not a spoiler.)

Non-twists. There were a few places where I expected a twist or complication, but it never arrived. It's difficult to give an example without spoiling the book, but there's a case where a simple mission has a warning attached: if anyone gets clumsy, it will foul everything up. Then the mission suddenly becomes almost a hundred times more complicated--and the dreaded foul-up never happens! It seemed a bit improbable, but the detour into disaster likely wouldn't have helped the story, which I suppose is why it didn't happen. Besides, sometimes the lack of an expected twist is a twist.

Paladin. At the end, Paladin, the ruler of the land, leads a military force that does clear the area usefully, but it then hangs around for cannon-fodder duty, even though Paladin should have been told that the battle can only be won another way. I can see clearing the path, but engaging the enemy beyond a limited point seems irrational. And Paladin's the one who usually knows what to do.

Telepathy. I can see people getting alarmed about magic and dragons, though I consider the fears groundless in this case. I'm more surprised that the constant use of telepathy apparently sparks no concern. I think fantasy is less dangerous than science fiction in this regard, because people are less likely to take fantasy seriously in real life. (Telepathy is more of a sci-fi trope, however.) I wouldn't mention the matter at all, but I have seen a lot of Christian fantasy and science fiction, both published and not-yet-published, that uses telepathy, and I want to stem that tide if I can.

There are at least two reasons why I don't think God would allow telepathy:

1. God alone knows the heart (2 Chron 6:30). This kind of knowledge seems to be a claim to deity. Thus, in John 2:25, the remark that Jesus knew what was in man is often taken as proof of his humanity. On the contrary: it proved his deity, as looking at the previous verse (24) shows: he knew what was in man because he knew all men. And while God does sometimes reveal someone's thoughts to a prophet, for example, that's more a special case. It isn't always there.

2. It would interfere with the gift of loneliness. Since the Fall, we have been cut off from each other--and to some extent even from ourselves. We read in Proverbs 14:10, "Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy." Even couples who have been married a long time are making educated guesses. They cannot truly know each other's thoughts and feelings. And this is a gift. For if we could get past that primal loneliness through a purely human relationship, we would be strongly tempted to ignore God. But God is the only one who does know our hearts, so our loneliness draws us to him. We long to be known and understood. God might grant unfallen beings such a power among themselves--we may have had it originally--but not those who need the loneliness telepathy would dispell.

Conclusion. Nonetheless, in part because fantasy is fantasy, I recommend this book, though of course those new to the series should start with the first book rather than here.

Even more rollicking adventure with the CSFF Team:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
* Beth Goddard
Mark Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Terri Main
Magma
Margaret
* Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
* Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
* Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
* Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

DragonLight 2: The Good Points

Okay, seriously--well, more seriously than last time, which wouldn't be hard--the major strength of Donita K. Paul's DragonLight is the writing. Yes, the characters are well handled, and the world-creation is nicely done. But for me, at least, the refreshing lack of authorial ADHD symptoms were the main selling point. Viewpoints don't ricochet off the pages, and neither do the subplots. It was pleasantly unlike being accosted by a deranged, high-pressure salesman, which is how some modern fiction acts. But it wasn't stodgy, either.

I speculate that she writes so well because she started out writing something simple and market-oriented. (The literacy I'll attribute to her being a teacher in a better time.) Most writers want to do something deathless right at the start, but sometimes beginning with something very consumer-oriented strips away all the cute tricks and helps you learn to write effectively. That prepares you for the serious work.

That said, characterization is the second selling point. I find that in order for me to write effectively, I must care about and even love my characters, and that includes villains, unless I mean them to be flat. If the writer doesn't care, neither will the readers, yet I often feel that writers don't know or care about their characters. Not so here: Paul clearly knows her characters well and cares about them.

(Actually, although it sounds backhanded, I guess her primary strength is not doing anything stupid. If that sounds trivial, you don't read much.)

I'd also like to touch on a couple of false negatives. To begin with, there's the magic. I admit that makes me nervous: we are no longer in a more innocent age when purely literary magic was recognized as such. Even though they had their dabblers in the Black Arts, it wasn't mainstream, and there was typically nothing occult about magic in children's books at least.

Someday I need to write about the varieties of magic in literature, but for now the important term is technological magic. This is magic as simply an alternative to science and technology--in fact, it has its own kind of technology. Back in my D&D days, this was how my friends and I viewed magic in the game: no occult background, just a different kind of tech that you could use for gadgets.

Of all the types of magic in literature, tech magic is the safest and easiest. At a deep level, it's also the least likely and realistic, but for fiction or games it works well. (If you want to do something epic and timeless, it doesn't work that well: it would completely louse up The Lord of the Rings, and it's one of the things that separates LotR from all the wannabes.)

Anyway, if you're paying attention, you soon figure out that the magic in DragonLight is technological. For one thing, Kale can look at a magical effect and figure out how it works. You can't do that with occult magic. Also, no one invokes spirits or magic words. (This is also important from the standpoint of imitability: when magic can be imitated, as magic words allow, it can plant seeds that will turn occultic later. The magic in this story doesn't seem at all imitable.)

To sum up: any kid who reads this and goes into witchcraft was already headed that way. He also probably didn't like the book or the magic: I predict that this won't appeal to such people.

I'm also mildly surprised, as I noted in my interview, that no one seems to quibble about the use of dragons. (Maybe someone on this tour has: I haven't had time to check.) While I don't agree with Bryan Davis' arguments for the biblical cuddliness of dragons, I think there is a possible argument from Psalm 104:26. Since God formed the leviathan, which all cutesy modern whitewashing aside was a dragon, not a whale or crocodile, then we may conclude that dragons, like snakes, started out good. That's all the argument you need: the same was true of human beings.

Even more rollicking adventure with the CSFF Team:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
* Beth Goddard
Mark Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Terri Main
Magma
Margaret
* Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
* Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
* Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
* Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

DragonLight 1: Intro

Donita K. Paul's DragonLight is the conclusion of her "DragonKeeper Chronicles" series. Since I haven't read the earlier books, it was a bit confusing to jump right in, but at least there are a cast of characters in the front and a glossary in the back. I'd still suggest starting with the first book.

Anyway, after a lot of unpleasantness, relative peace and niceness have been restored to Amara, which sounds as though boredom will ensue. Not so. After a bracing bit of pest control, Kale (Heroine, Dragon Keeper, Light Wizard, and Woman With a Secret Even She Doesn't Know About) discovers that her husband is taking her off on an extended date that could get them both killed. He sure knows how to show a lady a good time.

The date involves a quest to discover a lost colony of extra-smart dragons, which leads us to ask

1. If they're extra-smart, how come they got lost, and en masse yet?
2. If they got lost anyway, did they perhaps have a good reason, so they should be left alone?

However, Bardon (Kale's Husband, Knight, Spouter of Wisdom, Sufferer of Cooties on Steroids) has discovered a group of people living together in regimented conformity and led by a group who think they're God's gift to God. (Thereby proving that even the Almighty enjoys a gag gift on occasion.) Bardon thinks fast: they haven't sued him, so they aren't lawyers. They haven't pulled a spreadsheet on him, so they aren't accountants. That means they must be either cultists or members of MoveOn. In either case, they are a threat to the realm, for they will eventually leave their commune and clog up the airports.

He reports the matter to Paladin ("Pal" to his friends), who immediately recognizes the grave fashion risk involved and orders Bardon to find an "expendable sucker" (royal jargon for "hero") to infiltrate the group off-camera. (This is, after all, a family-friendly book.) But he also orders Bardon to go ahead with the working date, knowing that there's nothing as romantic as stumbling onto a whole colony of misplaced dragons.

However, the trip has barely started when the true evil rears its head--and no one has the wit to realize it but the reader. It begins with Regidor, one of the smart dragons--yes, the same kind as the lost guys: they sent him out for pizza and he couldn't find his way back. Anyway, he has invented a small forerunner of a TV or at least a Video iPod. Faster than you can say, "And now a word from our sponsor," a group of dinky black dragons shows up and starts annoying everyone. (The book blames this on some ancient legend about a humungous dragon with a kind of psoriasis--a poor cover story.)

Anyway, the good guys assemble a team:
Kale and Bardon, Specialists in Romance and Surviving Bad Stuff (almost redundant);
Regidor, Specialist in Wandering Way Off and Saying, "Can You Hear Me Now?"
Gilda, Regidor's wife, Specialist in Making Others Want to Survive so They Can Kill Her Afterward;
Sir Dar, Specialist in Cooking and in Talking People to Death;
Brunstetter, Specialist in Being Tall and Jovially Killing Things;
Toopka, Specialist in Being Cute Yet Mysterious;
Sittiponder, Specialist in Babysitting Toopka and in Not Being Deceived by Appearances.

(And a cast of thousands.)

Will they find the missing dragons? Will the cult find them first and bury them in tracts? Will someone turn out to be a Catholic who's read Bel and the Dragon and therefore knows an amusing way to dispatch a psoriatic pseudo-saurian?

What do I look like, a blabbermouth? Read the book, already!

Even more rollicking adventure with the CSFF Team:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
* Beth Goddard
Mark Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Terri Main
Magma
Margaret
* Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
* Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
* Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
* Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

Donita K. Paul Interview

I usually just review books, but I thought I'd break over and do an actual interview. But first, an overview based on the interview:

Donita Kathleen Paul was born November 20, 1950 in Lawrence, KS to Arthur Norman and Elnora Evelyn Foster Paul.

My father was an industrial, mechanical, and civil engineer. If WWII hadn’t interfered, he would have had a doctorate. Instead, he designed airplanes that wouldn’t fall out of the sky, even when riddled with bullet holes.

My mother taught and taught teachers how to teach for the Methodist church. My mother was a farm gal who furthered her education through fiction. She had an astounding vocabulary, a knowledge of many cultures, and ended up being a world traveler.

I had three older brothers, David, Stephen, and Jon. That meant there was a brother to hold my feet, one to hold my arms, and one to tickle.

Every one of us and many of our extended family were storytellers. Swapping tall tales at a family gathering was normal. One of my brothers was an oil executive and went to cocktail parties all over the world. He was known for what amounted to a stand-up comedy routine about his perception of his childhood. If you ask other members of the family, these accounts were fiction, or fictionalized truth, or out and out fabrication. At his funeral, his business associates were astonished to meet his seemingly normal family.

I graduated from High School in 1968. University of Houston in 1973 with a BS in Elementary Education.

I taught elementary grades in public and private schools until I retired in 1996.

Married, divorced, with two children.

(In case anyone wonders: I asked about all that because I couldn't find it online. And I'm nosy.)

The regular interview questions:

I was mildly surprised that you never commented on using dragons. Despite Bryan Davis' arguments to the contrary, the Biblical image of dragons is overwhelmingly negative. I can think of only one positive reference--Psalm 104:26. Do you consider this an issue? (For what it's worth, I can think of a possible defense; I just wonder about your views.)

I do not think the use of dragons is an issue any more than talking teapots or bears of very little brain. This is fiction!

I use many elements in my story to be allegorical. With all allegories, you must be careful not to carry them too far. They represent something that they are not. The minor dragons represent gifts God has bestowed on people: healing, music, ability to read and retain, providing light in the darkness, to name a few.

When the characters sit down for tea or a meal, that is allegorical as well. It signifies resting in the Lord and refueling from His Strength.

Why don’t I get called on the carpet for tea?

A dragon is a symbol for something evil in the Bible.

A fish was a fish until the symbol evolved as a sign for Christians.

A cross was a symbol of shameful death.

I have dragons who are good and some who are not.

The business of the Principles is also puzzling. I admit I haven't read the earlier books, just the last one for an upcoming blog tour, but it's almost like the local Bible consists only of Proverbs and the Psalms. Is there more?

The principles are mostly from the Proverbs. In DragonSpell there is mention of a story of how Wulder rewarded the generosity of the urohm people. And at another time, someone says that the Tomes are filled with guidelines for life and the history of how Wulder has worked in His creation. My intention was not to rewrite the Bible, but to use principles from Scripture in a fictional setting. Hopefully, the reader picks up on Truth that applies universally.

For that matter, has there been an Incarnation, or is that handled differently? Or has it perhaps not yet come up?

I admit to steering clear of recreating Christ. I feel Lewis did that with Aslan. He did it well, and I don’t feel the need to try to capture the essence of the Greatest Story in my fiction. Maybe God will impress upon me at a later date to do so, but I have no inclination now.

The Dragon Keeper Chronicles are about the Christian walk, how a person relates to God through acceptance of oneself, relationship to others, and glorifying the Creator in all he/she does.

There is no salvation message. As it turns out, it has been an evangelical tool in that readers have said to me, "I didn’t know being a Christian was like that. I’m going to learn more about Christianity."

That is gratifying, but certainly is not my work, but that of the Holy Spirit.