1996; 312 pages. New Author? : No. Genres : Mythopoeic Fantasy; Humorous Fantasy;
Satire. Overall Rating : 8*/10.
Saint George and the Dragon.
Everybody knows the legend. On one hand we have the hero, clad in shining
armor and wielding a gleaming sword. On the other
hand, we have the beast, covered in impregnable scales, sporting claws that
can slash through anything, and breathing white-hot fire. Sometimes there’s also a princess that needs rescuing,
sometimes not. Sometimes the dragon is
hoarding ill-gotten jewels, sometimes not.
It’s the classic case of Good vs. Evil, and in order to be a heroic
saga, Evil must, at least on the surface, objectively be the heavy favorite. It’s five times the size of our puny knight,
and its weapons and body-plating should easily carry the day.
But of course, it
doesn’t. Against all odds, the knight
wins, not because he’s faster or more powerful than the dragon, but because
he’s nobler and purer and whatnot. In
short, because he is the embodiment of Good.
So says the tale, and hey, the winners get to write the legends.
But what if the dragon was
actually the good guy …er… beast? What
if the knight wins because he cheats?
And what if that only comes to light centuries later?
There’s only one thing to
do: Arrange a rematch.
What’s To Like...
Paint Your Dragon
is another cleverly-contrived mythopoeic novel by Tom Holt in which he blurs the Good-vs-Evil aspect from a famous historical myth and creates an entertaining reevaluation of the story. Holt wrote about 20 of
these in the 1987-2002 timespan, I’ve read about half of those, and I’ve yet to
be disappointed by any of them.
The tale has the usual structure
for his books in this genre: we follow multiple and widely-disparate storylines which
keep us wondering if and how he’s ever going to coherently tie them
together. Here the main storyline is of
course St. George and the Dragon, but a talented sculptress is then added to
liven things up. Then other plotlines
arise: a “time-marketer” in England who will sell you extra time at
an exorbitant price; a busload of demons heading to Nashville for a
much-needed vacation; sixteen statues in Italy (including Michelangelo’s “David”); and a speck
of dust which somehow acts as the puppet-master in all the mayhem.
The tale is set for the most
part in England (Birmingham gets major billing),
with brief excursions to Italy and Mongolia.
As always, there is an abundance of Tom Holt's wit and zaniness to keep you entertained. Some of the characters die, but death here is
a rather temporary thing. Body-snatching
abounds, of both the animate and inanimate kinds. You’ll learn how to go forward and backward
in time (Holt’s physics is easier to grasp than
Quantum physics), how many angels can dance of the head of a pin (hint: it depends on what dance they’re doing),
and why you don’t see dragons nowadays.
The book is written in
English, not American, so besides the usual spelling differences, you meet pillocks with holdalls; and keep shtum so you don’t get nutted. People can be dozy or cozzy
and things can be naff. You’re
expected to know who Alf Garnett is, greet others with “Wotcher!”, cry out “Strewth!” if you're surprised, and keep studying this strange language for yonks.
The story has a typical Tom
Holt ending: he somehow manages to deftly tie up all those plotlines, and wraps things up in an unpredictable manner. Like the rest of Tom Holt’s mythopoeic tales,
this is a standalone novel, with no sequel needed.
Kewlest New Word ...
Meretricious
(adj.) : apparently attractive but
having in reality no value or integrity.
Others: Parthenogenetically (adv.); Banjax
(n.); Myrmidon
(n.); and many others.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 20
ratings.
Goodreads: 3.76*/5,
based on 615 ratings and 23 reviews.
Things that Sound Dirty but Aren’t…
“Please, can I put my
clothes back on now, Miss Frobisher? I’m
going blue.” (loc. 3478)
Excerpts...
He [Dragon George Cody] it was who first justified the clearances by saying that
the knights stood for good and the dragons stood for evil, and, in his own
terms, he was right. The knights were,
after all, soldiers of the Church, ultimately searching for the Grail, and the
dragons were getting in the way and, by deviously getting killed and eaten by
the locals, giving aid and comfort to the hostile tribesmen. Besides, George pointed out, dragons burn
towns and demand princesses as ransom.
The dragons, referring to the Siege of
Jerusalem, the Sack of Constantinople and a thousand years of dynastic
marriages, said, Look who’s talking. But
rarely twice. (loc. 866)
There’s an urban folk-myth that says that
every time a child says he doesn’t believe in dragons, somewhere a dragon
dies. This is unlikely, because if it
was true, we’d spend half our lives shovelling thirty-foot corpses out of the
highways with dumper trucks and the smell would be intolerable. Slightly more credible is the quaint
folk-theorem that says that the higher up and away you go, the less rigid and
hidebound the rules become; it’s something to do with relativity, and it limps
by for the simple reason that it’s far more trouble than it’s worth to disprove
it. (loc. 4984)
You can get
paranoid, thinking too hard about coincidences.
(loc. 2472 )
The quibbles are few and nitpicky. There is some cussing - 16 instances in the
first 20% - but a lot of time the made-up cussword “shopfloor” is substituted,
as in “What the shopfloor!?”.
Some reviewers complained that
following all those plotlines got confusing.
There’s some merit to this, but if you've read any of Tom Holt's novels before, you're aware that this is his usual style, and you don’t open the book when you’re dead tired.
Finally, if you were hoping
for a tie-in to the musical and/or film, Paint Your
Wagon, ANAICT, there is none.
Then again, I’ve never watched either version of PYW,
so what do I know.
8 Stars. Paint Your Dragon is another great piece of story-retelling by Tom Holt. It entertained me throughout and also raises some interesting questions about – beyond the telling of St. George and the Dragon – how blindly you should trust those "winners" in history who then purport to write an objective account of the matter. More to follow concerning that in a bit, via a review of my first book by Noam Chomsky.
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