Fantasy adventure stories where someone must face or slay dragons to right wrongs are not uncommon. There are been many excellent examples available: Emily Rodda’s Rowan of Rin, Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea and Tehanu, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, any number of titles by Anne McCaffery, Patricia Wrede, Laurence Yep or Jane Yolen all use the great mythical beasts to portray human challenges, fears and achievements. Child, teenage and adult readers alike can lose themselves in countless stirring tales.

Dragon books are a well established and extremely popular genre, which makes the many shortcomings of Moses Aaron’s ManDragon all the more obvious and puzzling.

When so many examples of a genre are available, conventions are established. Most dragon stories take place in a medieval world, with a poor central character trying to achieve or reclaim a rightful prize. There is often magic, and questions of right and wrong, and decisions. The challenge for an author is to take these standard elements and create a new picture.

ManDragon has all of these elements, but they do not blend together into a coherent and convincing story. Rather there are four distinct episodes that have little influence on each other and through which a group of rather unsympathetic characters wander towards the conclusion.

Episode One has a violent Lord Ironwolf killed by a dragon and his castle destroyed while his baby son is saved by the story teller Scop. Episode Two is twelve years later while the two, now living as Worm and Doctor Mandragora, sell fake medicines to villagers. Episode Three has them visit a supposed witch, Circe Cruel-Claw, for advice on killing dragons, while Episode Four takes them back to the original dragon.

Throughout there is so much extraneous detail that contributes nothing to the development of the story or the characters, but which hits the reader full in the face. For instance, Episode Two, probably a third of the book, seems little more than a description of festering sores, puddles of sewage, facial deformities, and brutal violence from anyone in any authority. None of this is a result of previous activity in the book and none of it takes the characters any closer to the dragon. It finishes and they move on. It just seems an excuse to say “snot”, “pus”, “piss” and any other unpleasant bodily function as many times as possible. Whether this is intended to make the book appeal to pre-adolescent boys is uncertain; if it is, it is patronising the book’s audience in the worst way.

Episode Three is not as offensive but, similarly, contributes nothing to the development of the story towards its conclusion. They learn nothing much for their task from Circe, who turns out to be simply a herbalist living (quite sensibly!) well away from town. This episode seems to be little more than a rewording of a textbook on medieval medicine as they walk around Circe’s garden.

Throughout the book, the question of “Why is this there?” nags the reader. Mad Maddalena, the dwarf fool, and her pet monkey Momo accompany Worm and Scop for no apparent reason other than comic relief through slapping and falling over. The final killing of the dragon is very brief and occurs just as predicted and described three quarters of the book earlier.

Moses Aaron has a considerable reputation as a storyteller and his previous books Lily and Me and Crow puzzles have both been received well for their sensitivity and emotion. This makes the clumsiness and unpleasantness of ManDragon more disappointing and hard to understand. With so many good examples of the fantasy adventure book around as rivals and comparisons, ManDragon could and should have been much better. 

Other books by this author:
The Duck Catcher (Mark McLeod/Hodder, 2003)

Review by David Beagley

© 1998 David Beagley