Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments!
Dragonsbane (1985)
Author: Barbara Hambly
Pages: 341 (paperback)
Publisher: Del Rey
Why I nominated this for book club: May is the month of moms, and I wanted to acknowledge that with books featuring maternal characters. I nominated a couple of different varieties of mom, and this one happened to be a biological mom.
Premise:
An idealistic young prince convinces an aging warrior and a struggling witch to help him kill the dragon that is terrorizing his kingdom
As a vicious dragon stalks the Southlands, Crown Prince Gareth ventures to the forbidding North in search of the only man who can kill it. He is Lord Aversin, the Dragonsbane, whose dragon-slaying days have won him renown across the land. But when Gareth finds Lord Aversin, he discovers the mighty hero is squat and bespectacled, the ruler of a mud-village who admits that he killed the dragon not with a lance, but with ignoble poison. Still, he’ll have to do.
Gareth and Aversin set off in company with Jenny Waynest, a witch with great ambitions but disappointingly puny powers—a ragtag crew destined to become legendary, or die in the attempt.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Barbara Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
Spoilers, of course
Discussion:
Right off the bat I need to say that I really and truly loved this book. I was delighted by these imperfect characters and their imperfect lives and relationships. Jenny, who for ten years hasn’t been able to choose between her drive for power and her love for the family she made but doesn’t live with. John, the only living dragon killer who’d rather be ankle deep in mud talking about pigs than celebrating his heroic deeds. Gareth comes the closest to the cookie cut out of a fantasy prince but even he is pretty bad at being noble.
These characters are all my preciouses.
I loved the glimpses of Jenny’s life and her relationship to her children. The fun mom who comes into town and kisses and hugs them but doesn’t have to deal with their day-to-day.
Like puppies who tolerate a kennelkeeper’s superintendence, the boys displayed a dutiful affection toward John’s stout Aunt Jane, who cared for them and, she believed, kept them out of trouble while John was away looking after the lands in his charge and Jenny lived apart in her own house on the Fell, pursuing the solitudes of her art. But it was their father they recognized as their master, and their mother as their love. (Page 26)
Especially for 1985, I feel like this characterization of a woman in a fantasy novel, even one written by a woman, is almost revolutionary. And even though she does choose, at the end of the book, to go back to her family and back to being a human, the fact that she chose, for even a little bit, to abandon it all and pursue her power meant a lot to me as a reader.
John is the perfect anti-hero, from the moment we first meet him ankle deep in the mud to his spectacles to the time he attended dinner in court in his traveling mail.
Quietly, Gareth said, “Aversin—Lord John—I—I’m sorry. I didn’t understand about the Winterlands.” He looked up, his gray eyes tired and unhappy behind their cracked specs. “And I didn’t understand about you. I—I hated you, for not being what—what I thought you should be.” (Page 73)
And point of fact, he is the hero of his own tale. He did, in fact, slay a dragon. But that happened before this particular tale, and this particular tale is all Jenny’s. But I still love that John is who he is, that he doesn’t apologize for it, and yes, that his true passion is actually pig farming and making sure the people dependent on him survive the harsh winters.
Morkoleb was such a cool character too. The contrast between the dragon’s power and Jenny’s power as a mage was interesting and I really liked their connection. The ending reminded me of the ending of The Last Unicorn, which is a favorite book of mine.
It is a cruel gift you have given me, wizard woman, he said. For you have set me apart from my own and destroyed the pleasure of my old joys; my soul is marked with this love, though I do not understand what it is and, like you, I shall never be able to return to what I have been.
… Be happy, then, wizard woman, with this choice that you have made. I do not understand the reasons for it, for it is not a thing of dragons—but then neither, any longer, am I. (Page 340) (Editor’s note: the dragon “speaks” in italics)
And so we need to talk about the ending, because I feel like that could be the most divisive part of any discussion about this book. I liked that she became a dragon, and I liked that she returned to being a human. And more than that, I liked the reasons. That she recognized Zyerne’s quest for power and the dark and evil path that led her down, that she saw how that quest had twisted Zyerne, and how those choices were reflected in Jenny’s choices. I was ready to accept Jenny ending the book as a dragon, and I would have defended that choice, but I’m just as happy to see her choose love and her family instead. And I loved most that John gave her the space to make her own choice, that he didn’t try to influence her as he had done when he was younger, that Hambly showed how both of these characters had grown over their years together.
In conclusion: I loved the story and the characters and am actually super stoked that this seems to be the beginning of a series. I will definitely be checking out where this story goes.
Man, it’s been a gazillion years since I read this, but I remember reading and rereading it obsessively for a while. It really was revolutionary! I remember being as surprised as Gareth about the pig-farmer John, about Jenny not being the typical helpmeet, about her actually having children! And of course, the dragons were awesome. I still remember them saying that slaying it was sheer butchery, and shifting my viewpoint again. Now I want to reread this.
You should, it’s so good!! I was really blown away by how much I loved it.
I’m on the same page, Merrin – I rated this one 5 stars on Goodreads. The ending had me in tears – Jenny’s conflict between power and love is so well drawn and touching.
I’m not usually a big fan of established-relationship stories, but I loved Jenny and John and their relationship. For a fantasy couple, they were very relatable and real. And the plot was very original and unpredictable (for the most part). It’s interesting to compare this book to Daggerspell. They’re both British-Isles influenced medieval-ish fantasy written by women in the 1980s – and they both pay a lot of attention to the question of women’s freedom to make choices and women’s power. But this book was a lot more readable, had a more coherent magical system and a stronger plot, and had way less creepiness in the way romantic relationships are portrayed.
I hate to burst your excitement about the sequels, but I feel like I should caution you. I haven’t read any of the other books in the series, but I did read some of the reviews on Goodreads, and the takeaway seems to be that you should pretend this is a one-shot instead of reading the sequels. If you want more high fantasy from Barbara Hambly, you might try the Sun Wolf and Star Hawk books instead. I liked the first one, The Ladies of Mandrigyn, a good bit. It has some similar themes with Dragonsbane (although I personally preferred Dragonsbane). I had some issues with the sequel, The Witches of Wenshar, which is both on the grimdark side and has some weird body shaming stuff going on that I didn’t like.
You’re not the first person I’ve heard say the sequels aren’t as good. That’s disappointing. 🙁
I think the thing I enjoyed about it being established it still had somewhere to go, growth that could happen in it. Neither of them were truly fulfilled by the relationship the way it was. Which made it more interesting for me, for sure.
I first read this book maybe thirty years ago. I loved it then, but it had been many years since I had re-read it, so I appreciate this book club getting me to read it again.
What makes the book for me is the characterization of Jenny and her relationship with magic and with John. It’s lovely having non-teenage protagonists as well. I agree with just about everything in your review, so I don’t know that I have a lot more to say about the book right now.
I have also heard bad things about the sequels to this book and have not read them. I do recommend her Darwath, Windrose Chronicles, and Sun Wolf and Star Hawk series. She wrote a vampire book before Anne Rice made vampire books trendy, called Those Who Hunt the Night, which is also great.
About 20 years ago, she switched from writing SFF to writing historical mysteries as Barbara Hamilton. Her best-known series is the Benjamin January series. It is set in pre-Civil War New Orleans. The protagonist, Benjamin January, is 3/4 black and 1/4 white. He is A Free Man of Color, which is the title of the first book in the series. He returns from Paris to New Orleans after 20 years away, newly widowed. He trained and practiced as a surgeon in Paris and has some significant culture shock when he returns to New Orleans. The world-building skills Barbara Hambly developed as an SFF writer translate wonderfully to her characterization of historical New Orleans.
Haha yeah this one didn’t seem to be great for discussion except to say YEAH ME TOO. Thanks for the recs for some of her other books though!!