“Dragonmarch” by Ian Thomas Curtis

I’m hooked on a story, and what a story it is.

Last year, I read and reviewed Dragonsong by Ian Thomas Curtis, the first in a series of novels with the general title of The Canticles of Andurun. The novel falls into the fantasy genre, but the story was so exciting and I became so caught up in it that I blew right past “fantasy” and instead focused on what it really was – a great story.

Now comes the second volume in the series: Dragonmarch. Second novels in a series can sometimes disappoint, unable to sustain the momentum of the first novel.

Dragonmarch does not have that problem. If anything, the story is becoming even more riveting.

Justias Eventine is a young man in a village in the land of Kallandaros, a sprawling continent largely controlled by dragons and the clerics who serve them, although “soldier” is a more apt definition than “cleric.” For 200 years, the dragons and clerics have allowed the old noble houses to maintain some semblance of authority, but that is beginning to change, and the dragons are beginning their moves to eradicate all of humanity.

In Dragonsong, Justias and his father William help an injured cleric, who is fleeing the order. Because of that help, the people of the village are killed and the two Eventines become something of outlaws. Eventually, Justias does something that no one believed possible – he kills a dragon. He becomes the dragon slayer – the one foretold who would arise to overthrow the rule by the dragons.

In Dragonmarch, representatives of an order known as the Men of Valor determine that Justias is indeed the one foretold, and he is crowned king, igniting a series of events involving the clerics and their allies, the old nobility and its determination to destroy the new king, and the assembling of armies to march upon the main stronghold of the nobility and so begin the final war of the dragons against humanity.

The story is fascinating. It’s a large, complex tale, more an epic than a single story, with several narrative threads deftly woven together into a cohesive whole. Dragonmarch is a story of faith and hope, betrayal and death, a realistic story in which the good often die and the bad seem to fund new ways to survive and flourish. It’s a world full of dangers, but a world in which a few brave men and women are willing to fight evil. And their courage attracts people to fight alongside them.

These are large themes painted across a large canvas that is the world of Kallendaros. I’m constantly amazed by the attention to detail, as Curtis shapes and reveals this world and its denizens. And the suspense builds through a series of skirmishes and minor battles, swordfights, an attack by a goblin army, a dragon set loose on a cleric-controlled city (the dragons are as much into treachery as the humans are), and a plot to assassinate the new young king.

The novel has a cliffhanger ending, which left me shouting “No! I need to read the next chapter!” I’m definitely hooked on this wonderful, imaginative story.

Related:

My review of Dragonsong

My interview with Ian Thomas Curtis: Part 1 and Part 2

Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

It’s a pleasantly disturbed Friday. Duane Scott is on vacation somewhere or I’d give him credit for inventing this type of blog post.

In addition to The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges (Thursdays) and The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer (Wednesdays), I’m reading a book I can barely stand to put down – Dragonmarch by Ian Curtis. It’s the second volume in his Canticles of Andurun fantasy series, and it is one great story. It is also one big story, big as in epic, and it has dragons and goblins, an array of strange creatures, and humans who fighting the dragons, fighting each other, fighting the goblins. It is a rocking good story, and my review will be up next week.

Two other books I’m working on reviews (and an interview) on are Ursula LaGuin’s new book of poems, Finding My Elegy, and Emily Wierenga’s Chasing Silhouettes.

I had two blog posts this – on various chapters in The Discipline of Grace and The Pursuit of God – that I expected to be easy to write but turned out not to be. Sometimes you have to reach down inside and admit something, or do something, or decide something. Those posts were like that. Of course, those books – both classics – are like that, too.

I’m editing away on the manuscript of A Light Shining, the sequel to Dancing Priest. It’s coming, but the hard part lies ahead. The rewriting part. I did a small preview of the rewriting part – my attempt to try to make sense of all the comments I have to make sense of. The story is going to change, and that character in the preview – who came out of nowhere – is, I think, going to be the instrument to change the story.

Writing is a nutty line of work.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and went to see the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. She was keen to see it, I was more nonchalant, and I ended up liking it more than she did. It was filmed in Louisiana, way down there in Terrebonne Parish, not too far from where I grew up in suburban New Orleans. As my wife said, “It’s as weird as everything else in southern Louisiana.” I did not feel insulted. Much. And it is an odd movie, the kind that movie critics usually rave about and the rest of the world scratches its head and says, “What?”

I received the news today that one of the sites I write for occasionally will be closing down. More on that after the official announcement next week. It’s the way of the online world, I suppose, sites can come and go, but it still leaves me with a quiet, sad feeling. The contributors are also trying to figure out what to do with the archives.

In September, I’m going to change up the weekly Saturday Good Reads for two or three weeks, just to try something different. More on that later, too.

I'm scheduled to have lunch today with my daughter-in-law and grandsons. they're back from a triumphant tour of Little Rock (their maternal grandmother) and Shreveport (their paternal great-grandmother and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins). In Shreveport, Cameron discovered the wonder of flashlights.

The nice thing about Pleasantly Disturbed Friday is that you don’t have to think about how to end the post with something insightful or memorable.

You can just end it.