Dragonhenge by Bob Eggleton and John Grant

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Dragonhenge by Bob Eggleton and John Grant

Pub: Paper Tiger. 128 page hardback. Price: £20 (UK), $29.95 (US) and $46.95 (CAN). ISBN: 1-85585-972-6

Check out website: www.papertiger.co.uk

For a Paper Tiger release, I have some very mixed feelings about this book. Artist Bob Eggleton's standard of dragons is par for the course.

As he's also experimenting here we also see a variety of pencil as well as full blown paintings that will appeal to all dragon-lovers.

If I was to be critical, it would have been nice to have seen more landscapes showing where the dragons lived but that's only an opinion when backgrounds turn to the surreal.

In the introduction, author John Grant says that as this book doesn't feature humans, he very much put on a dragon's mindset when writing the prose.

If it had stretched to a dragon's body, he'd be wonderful at barbecues! To some extent, I also think this is part of the problem. When I discuss storycraft with neo-writers, something that occasionally comes up is a frame-of-reference.

The reason a modern day man is often placed in a future setting is usually to draw comparison to what they have (& where it's going wrong) to what we have today. When you're a big dragon, scales, flying around and all the things that dragons do then humans pale in comparison.

Giving them an intellect greater than whales - cos all their stories are passed on by word of mouth cos they don't write - means there has to be some translation. I couldn't help feel that there was something lost in the translation.

The dragons fly around a bit, develop a philosophical point of view and that's the end of a story. There's a challenge from a different tribe of dragons but other than that, I'd hate to say this, but life is pretty tame on the dragon front.

As this is an experimental volume, it feels a little awkward criticising from this POV. Fantasy lovers will no doubt say I didn't get it. That being the case, then you'll no doubt be enjoying this book.

Eggleton fans will be picking this book up for the art.

GF Willmetts

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