Dragons.
Dinosaurs, reimagined as a nightmare. The Six Million Dollar Dino from Fantasy just got bigger, stronger, faster, and meaner. Better. A boogeyman from Jurassic Park; a spooky tale told by mama’s dinosaurs to scare their babies, of great flying reptiles, covered in scales like lizard-skin porcelain, maws gleaming with killer enamel, eyes that gleam with attitude, menace. Possibly breath of fire. A predator. The top of the food chain.
So people came to the scene. With their huge egos, their misconceptions and their fervent belief that they wear the rule pants, proclaiming themselves to be at the top of the food chain. Ruler of the Universe. It is our world; everything else is just a peasant creeping before our throne, basking in our glory. Dragons are fearsome, yes. But they are beasts. Mounts. like a pony. Only much scarier.
So we tame them, we breed them, we nurture them. So we can mount them. as nobility. Like Dragon Lords. The biggest and scariest predator in the kingdom, and we put it between our legs. Like the ultimate fantasy weapon of mass destruction, a hundred megaton nuclear reptile. Only a bad man could ride such a bad beast. When it comes to surrogate penises, dragons are second to none.
And the dragons allow it. Allow to be dominated, ridden. Like an obedient and accommodating pony, happy and content, tame and mostly harmless, a gift you’d give your eight-year-old daughter because she screams: I want a dragon. Most dragons happily submit, longing for a pat on the head or a word of encouragement, though they are often intelligent, self-aware, and rational. Some speak, others communicate telepathically. Some display immense intellectual capacity, enough to humiliate a Harvard law student. Others speak as if they are channeling Jane Austen.
So why allow himself to serve as a mount for some vainglorious, some Dragon Rider? Why allow yourself to be treated as inferior? Are they good-hearted or driven by a strong moral fiber? Or maybe it’s because of his deep friendship with the rider? In fact. is it friendship? When was the last time you let your best friend ride on your back while you carried him? It is the magnificent mystery of fantasy, a puzzle wrapped in a puzzle. Unanswered.
Until now.
Stephen Deas shatters this mystery, hammering the dragon myth to shreds, in his amazing new novel The Adamantine Palace. Vicious and predatory dragons. Equally unpleasant humans, driven by personal agendas. Short plot, thick as tar, and just as black. A novel less about good and evil, and more about evil and the worst. About who is the biggest monster. Dragons. Or people.
Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series has been the recent standard-bearer for dragon-themed fantasy. Part Napoleonic war story, part travelogue, Daredevil is all about friends, the heartwarming tale between a boy, or former naval officer, in this case, and his friendly talking dragon. He is generally cheerful and leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy. Unlike The Adamantine Palace, which crushes the necks (and hopes) of good dragons everywhere under its monstrous claw, repeatedly stomping on them until their swollen black tongues dangle from their crushed skulls, before finally urinating in the aftermath. . It’s the anti-Temeraire, a novel where the dragons finally get mad and do something violent about it. And it is a revolution, an uprising in which Deas removes Novik’s dragon mantle, becoming the new standard-bearer. There’s a new sheriff in town. And his name is Stephen Deas.
The characters are fantastical, multifaceted, and morally complex. It is not good versus evil; nothing good here. There are no angelic choirboys, no innocent doe-eyed farmers. There are only the most powerful, the rulers of the earth, those with Machiavellian agendas, those who seek number one, the selfish. The kings and queens; the princes and princesses. All of them murderers and traitors. Not since George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has court intrigue been so deliciously wicked, so deliciously funny. The Adamantine Palace is all about power. And those who fight for it. Who lies about it? Who kills for that?
Prince Jehal shines as one of the main drivers of the book. He is the arrogance of a frat boy suffocated by malice, a Teflon bully, a conceit to a sickening extreme. The character that you will love to hate, the one that will make you beg for karmic justice, pray for her. Hoping, desperately, that fate would depend on the asshole. To expose his vulnerability. Just so you can savor the sweet taste of him.
Stephen Deas shakes up the myth of the dragon beautifully in his seismic, Richter-scale novel The Adamantine Palace. These are not your father’s dragons. These are the dragons your mom warned you about, the ones that lurk in the shadows, doing bad things. Horrible things. These are the predators; those who use dental floss with velociraptors. no apologies Vicious. Intelligent. Unstoppable. And they may not even be the biggest monsters on the block. That distinction may be reserved for the people who ride them.
One of the best fantasy books of the year.