CSFF Blog Tour: DragonLight Day 3

The Blog Tour for DragonLight wraps up today. I thought I'd end with a cautionary lesson I've learned from the DragonKeeper series. As speculative fiction authors, we have to be very careful with the symbols we use, especially when it comes to Christ.

When I first started reading the DragonKeeper stories, I thought I had the Paladin character figured out. In my mind, he was clearly the Christ figure for the story. He ruled Amara. He had miraculous powers. He had been alive for centuries. It certainly seemed like he filled that role in the story.

But as I read the next books, I became more and more confused. Paladin didn't seem all that Christ-like anymore. Not that he was doing evil stuff, but there were hints that he wasn't the Christ figure after all. After what I thought was such a strong connection in DragonQuest, it was a bit disconcerting.

During the blog tour for DragonFire, I mentioned my discomfort about this apparent Christological confusion, and I was told that Donita K. Paul never intended Paladin to be a Christ-figure for her stories. That made me feel a little better. But as I re-read the entire series in preparation for this tour, even knowing that Paladin wasn't a Christ analogue, I still got the same impression in the early books. While I spotted more hints that it wasn't the case, it still made me uncomfortable.

The same thing happened when I read Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet. I was sure the Keeper was some sort of Christ figure, only to be told that I had messed up again.

Perhaps the problem is mine. Maybe other readers didn't see the possible connection or be concerned by it. As a Lutheran, I tend to be a bit Christocentric in my theology and thinking. At any rate, the whole quandry made me realize a lesson. We have to be careful in how we approach anyone (or anything) that might be construed as a Christ figure.

Different authors approach this in different ways. For example, Kathy Tyers and Sharon Hinck solved the issue the same way: they set their stories (the Firebird trilogy and the Restorer trilogy respectively) in a time before Christ. Karen Hancock took an opposite approach in the Legends of the Guardian King books by setting her story a thousand years after the Christ event.

It behooves us as Christian authors to be clear about our characters and the concepts in our stories. Granted, there might be those who get tripped up (like me), but it shouldn't be because we weren't careful enough.

While I may have been sort of negative this tour, it shouldn't discourage anyone from reading these books. They are great books. Go and see what the others have to say:

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
Steve Rice
* Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
* Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

CSFF Blog Tour: DragonLight Day 2

On the Rehabilitation of Dragons...

When we talk about DragonLight and the rest of the DragonKeeper series, there's an interesting shift that Donita K. Paul achieves. She rehabilitates dragons from a Christian point of view.

She's not the only one to attempt this. As a matter of fact, I first learned about the DragonKeeper books about the same time that I heard about Bryan Davis's Dragons in Our Midst books. And, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, I had a negative reaction to both. "Dragons as good guys? In a Christian series? I think not!" The reason for this rather close-minded mindset is because of the symbolic luggage that dragons carry around in Christianity. After all, in Revelation, Satan is depicted as a dragon. It's just a bit natural for people to be wary about books that cast the symbolic image of ultimate evil as the good guys.

But those who would completely reject these books for that reason would miss some awfully good stories. And besides, there are two points that we should remember.

First of all, Revelation is full of symbolic language. Satan is no more a literal dragon than Jesus is a seven eyed, seven horned, glow-in-the-dark lamb. God used that imagery because a dragon would likely evoke certain feelings and concepts in John's mind.

Second, and more importantly, by rehabilitating dragons like this, we Christians are "taking it back." In some ways, it's a redemptive venture, striking out into Satan's realm and claiming back what should have always been ours in the first place.

Think of it this way: Satan can't create anything. He can only twist and distort what God Himself has created. It's a shame to leave Satan with anything that he can call his own when we can snatch it back from him, sanctify it in the light of Christ, and make it our own. And yes, I know that I'm paralleling Paul's discussion of Wulder's high and low races here.

The trick is to make sure that we can relate what's being redeemed to God properly. Another good example is the way that Paul uses "magic" in her books. Let's face it, that's extremely tricky and if it's not done right, can lead to a huge mess. After all, the Bible is pretty clear that Christians aren't to engage in any sort of godless sorcery.

But Paul sidesteps this issue by making the wizards in her book operate under Wulder's authority and by tying magic into the rules of Wulder's creation. As such, they're not operating independently or in contradiction to Wulder, but they're doing so in relation to Him.

Be sure to check out what the rest of the blog tour participants have to say:

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
Deena Peterson
Steve Rice
* Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
* Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

CSFF Blog Tour: DragonLight Day 1

Today we begin the blog tour "for real." This month's featured book is DragonLight by Donita K. Paul, the final book in the DragonKeeper series. I've really looked forward to reading this, the final entry.

In it, Kale Allerion and her husband, Bardon, along with the rest of the citizens of Amara, have been at peace after the defeat of Burner Stox and Crim Cropper. Kale's flock of dragons has increased exponentially and Bardon has been hard at work with his duties as a magistrate. But the time has come for them to go on another quest. Along with Regidor and Gilda, they set out to find the lost meech colony.

But all is not well in the lands ruled by Paladin. A strange new sect has arisen called the Followers. They claim to follow new mandates handed down by Paladin himself. And what of the strange attacks by small black dragons who seem focused on destroying Kale?

As the final chapter in this series unfolds, Kale and Bardon find themselves fighting for their lives and those they love against an ancient, slumbering evil that is close to waking up.

While Paul's writing was excellent as always, I finished the book feeling a little disappointed. The story judt didn't hang together that well for me.

For starters, there was the Followers. In my opinion, this subplot felt tacked on, almost like it was filler. I was fascinated and quite excited that Kale and Bardon would be taking on a nefarious heresy, exposing the evil that lurked beneath the surface while putting their lives at risk. Truth be told, I was more interested in the Followers than in the search for the missing meech colony.

This may be "Monday morning quarterbacking," but I think the Followers could have been the center of the book. Instead, they became something Kale and Bardon did while they were waiting around for the "main quest" to keep going. Most of the action (including the Followers rise to power and subsequent fall) happened "off stage," so to speak. They played such a minor role in the book, it almost felt like they were put in to fill out the book a little. Since Bardon and Kale played a very minor role in their downfall, it left me wondering why the Followers were in there at all.

Second, there's the way the book ended. In some ways, it felt like a deus ex machina to me. Or in this case, a deus ex doneel. This includes how Gilda became a true "good guy." It felt a bit unnatural.

And finally, there's the way this book relates to the other four. It felt a bit anticlimactic and it's all because of the villain they faced.

The villain didn't seem worthy of being the "big bad evil" in the final book of the series. There was a definite "hierarchy of evil" in the previous four books that went something like this:

1) Pretender

2) Risto

3) Burner Stox & Crim Cropper.

Risto gets wiped out in the second book. Burner and Crim are brought to justice in the fourth. So you would think that the final book would lead to some massive confrontation with the greatest evil Amara has ever faced, something to do with Pretender. Instead, Paul introduces a new evil, one who is definitely bad but didn't seem like a natural outgrowth of the stories thus far.

That is perhaps the part of that frustrated me the most. While Paul did drop a few hints in two of the previous books about how this final story would play out, it wasn't enough. There should have been other threads about this final big bad guy woven in through the previous books, just enough so that we could look back later and go, "Hey, yeah! I remember her talking about that!"

Instead, the villain seemingly pops up out of nowhere and didn't seem connected to what came before. To put it another way, imagine if in Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam defeated Sauron and destroyed the One Ring in The Two Towers and then the former Fellowship did battle with space aliens in the final book.

In spite of what might be perceived as a massive dose of negativity, I have really enjoyed the DragonKeeper books. Like I said yesterday, I've enjoyed sojourning in the creative and colorful world that Paul created. And I'm also looking forward to the next series that's apparently starting up in 2009. I just wish that the final book of this series sat better with me.

Make sure to check out what other people are saying on the tour, especially those with the asterisk next to them. Consider them "Blog Tour All-Stars." They've been with the tour since the beginning, which was focused around DragonKnight:

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
Deena Peterson
Steve Rice
* Cheryl Russel
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
* Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams

CSFF Blog Tour: DragonLight Day 0

Starting tomorrow, the monthly blog tour kicks off for Donita K. Paul's latest book, DragonLight. It's the fifth and final book of the DragonKeeper saga. Before I read DragonLight, I went back and read the other four, namely DragonSpell, DragonQuest, DragonKnight, and DragonFire. I wanted to make sure I remembered everything that happened in the series.

It was a wonderful trip through some familiar territory. I love the world that Paul created for her stories. For example, the seven high races that Wulder created and the seven low races that Pretender created via corruption. Each of the fourteen races are unique and colorful. Emerlindians who change color as they mature. Kimens who wear light. Mordalkeeps who cut people off by swallowing them. Quiss who swarm over the land occasionally. And then the bisonbecks who, for some reason, I always picture looking like this:

Then there are the wizards. I love the fact that the different wizards have primary aspects that change their appearance. Wizard Fenworth, the bog wizard, who turns into a tree when he sleeps and constantly has critters scurrying out of him. Wizard Cam, the lake wizard, who drips when he sits and occasionally sprays people. Wizard Lyll, the mortal wizard, who grows old if she sits still too long. It's a colorful conglomeration that makes the book all the more fun.

And finally, there are the dragons, especially the minor ones. Each one has a color and the color determines what talent they have. At first, I wasn't completely sold on that idea, but it grew on me, especially after Dibl hatched. But there are minor dragons who can sing, who can heal, who are engineers, who are basically flying memory banks. That, plus the fact that all of the minor dragons have their own unique personalities, really made the stories sing.

And the stories themselves were great, following the adventures of Kale Allerion as she learns what it means to not only be Paladin's Dragon Keeper but a wizard herself. She makes friends, she makes enemies, in books that are truly great.

Except for the third one. This time through, I had a hard time with DragonKnight. It just didn't have the zing of the other three. Part of it is the fact that it's so long. It's the longest of the series and because of the pacing, takes a while to work through.

There are two other problems with DragonKnight, namely a lack of conflict and a lack of personal stake for the protagonist.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Bardon, a knight in Paladin's service, is supposed to be on a sabbatical when he's saddled with a quest. Three women of various races want him to take them north to save a group of sleeping knights. If they don't make it in time, the knights could die.

There's no obvious bad guy in the story, only the ticking clock. Normally a race against time could be a nailbiter. The problem is, Bardon and the women take a leisurely route. While it sounds like they should be desperate, they don't come across that way. They know they need to get north, but they seem to take it easy. They wind up meandering through the countryside. Instead of coming across as a fevered race against doom, it seems more like a leisurely stroll.

The other problem is that Bardon doesn't really have a perosnal stake in the outcome of the quest. He goes with them out of a sense of duty to Wulder, but not because he'll gain or lose anything from it. This impression is ultimately wrong, but the reader carries it with them throughout the book. At least, I did. Bardon's just along for the ride for most of this lengthy story. As a result, there isn't much to drive it.

But for all its faults, DragonKnight doesn't drag on the overall series too much. It's a delightful story set in a creative, fun world. And tomorrow, I'll discuss what I liked and didn't like about the final entry, DragonLight.

Overlord

I just now finished playing Overlord on my PC and I have to say, I understand now why I was able to get my copy for only $10 at Amazon. It was only worth that much.

In this game, you play the new evil Overlord. You have armor, four spells, and the best part, evil minions.

The minions were great. I laughed at them a lot, especially the first time they swarmed over a herd of sheep and cut them down. I also laughed at the brown minions the first time I realized one of them was using a dead rat as a helmet. Seriously.

The game itself tries to be a send-up of fantasy games. Instead of playing the interpid hero setting out to defeat the forces of evil, you are the forces of evil setting out to destroy the heroes. Only in this case, the heroes have become corrupted and evil themselves. So in some ways, it's more evil fighting lesser evil.

The plot, if it can be called such, seemed slathered on at the last minute. While I was playing through, you could tell that the developers tried to come up with a story to tell. It wasn't until the very end that I realized what that story was. Unfortunately, by that time, I was so frustrated with the game I didn't care. If they had taken a bit more time to develop the story and actually tell it, maybe it would have made the game better.

But what really annoyed me was that this was yet another game that had obviously been developed for console and then imported to PC. There are a lot of them out there. The thing is, the developers at Codemasters didn't take the time to actually rework the controls to make it playable on a PC. Instead, they found rough equivalents for the controls and left it at that.

A few examples: the lack of a true save feature. The only way to save your progress is to go back to certain checkpoints and teleport back to your tower. In a real PC game, you can just hit escape and then save your game. Or even just hit one of the function keys to quick-save your game. This is particularly useful when you're trying to fight your way through a difficult level, such as the Ruborian Desert level. Such a save function isn't possible on a console. I get it. But I'm not playing on a console. I'm playing on a PC.

Another annoyance was the "sweep" maneuver. I had to hold down both mouse keys and move the mouse around if I wanted to directly control where my minions went. Instead, I wound up twitching the mouse back and forth as my minions tried to follow my directions. The hinky camera didn't help as it had difficulty tracking what I was doing. I suspect that in the console version, this works much better. Clearly Codemasters didn't take the time to think through a better alternative.

Finally we have the asinine aiming function. Once again, the developers seemed to forget that PC players would have an actual mouse with which to aim their characters. Instead, I have to point my Overlord in the general direction of what I'm aiming for and then hit "shift." At least a third of the time, this resulted in me locking on to the wrong object, which is a bit disconcerting when it happens in the heat of battle. Again, a function that was clearly designed for console players falls short in the PC port.

Why am I harping on this so badly? Because a good PC port can be done. Bioshock did it. So did Knights of the Old Republic. But unfortunately, so long as certain developers remain lazy, I'll have to be wary of bad ports.

Shame, too. This game had a lot of promise, but weak storytelling and lazy importing made it a bargain bin game. And it fits there. It really does.