My Goodreads review: The Sign of the Dragon

[ankh_hpl]

The Sign of the Dragon by Mary Soon Lee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What an utterly beautiful, impressive, & occasionally heartbreaking reading experience! Having read Crowned, the first portion of this fantasy novel-in-poems, a few years ago, I was eager to see what the whole novel would be like -- and it did not disappoint. In fact, it turned out to be much more than I'd been expecting, both in quality & in scope.

Essentially, this is a multicultural epic fantasy. The protagonist, King Xau, rules a somewhat Chinese kingdom but has allies and enemies from other recognizable cultures. There is indeed a dragon, wise & dangerous. There are other monsters, sometimes wise and always dangerous. There are assassinations, royal weddings, strong women both good & evil, demons, dark magic, bloody battle scenes, and horses who will follow Xau without question. There is a final, agonizing quest.

And all of this is presented in finely-crafted, accessible poems that are nearly impossible to stop reading when it's way past your bedtime.

I'd recommend this to any fantasy reader, whether that reader is usually into poetry or not. The only catch -- for now, due to the pandemic -- is that it's only available for Kindle. It works perfectly well in that format, however (check your font size until the lines appear correctly), & is very inexpensive. For me, it was a perfect summer evening read in anxious times.







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