|
|
A review by Peter D. Tillman
Precious Dragon opens slowly and somewhat confusingly, as Liz Williams has to set three or four parallel story-trains
into motion. Unlike the first two D.I. Chen books, you definitely shouldn't start here. Even readers who've read the first two
book may be doing a bit of head-scratching (and toe-tapping) until she gets all her balls into the air.
But then -- wow! All the cool stuff I've loved in the first two books, and more! Viz, Chen musing on his mortality,
aboard the Hell-Bound Train:
"When he died, as a devoted servant of the Goddess Kuan Yin, Most Merciful and Compassionate, he might
reasonably expect to enter Heaven. Okay, he'd married a demon. His right-hand man was from Hell. On a previous,
unfortunate occasion, he'd used the goddess'
sacred image as a battering ram. Good thing she was Merciful and Compassionate..."
The Hell-Bound Train! Can there be a more resonant image in SF&F, either in
words or as
pictures?
Williams' iteration is spectacular:
"It was bullet-shaped, black and silver..., coruscated with magnificent ornamentation. Its engine
was encased in the head of a centipede: of a kueri, and the name on its side read STORM LORD."
"Wow," Chen remarked. "It's certainly baroque."
Which isn't a bad description of Williams's book. Plus, it made me smile a lot. Liz Williams is a Jack Vance
fan, and it shows. I haven't quite decided who Zhu Irzh, "large as life and twice as unnatural,"
reminds me of... Not quite as finely-crafted as the first two, in my judgement, but if you've come this far,
you won't want to stop now.
Copyright © 2008 Peter D. Tillman
Pete Tillman has been reading SF for better than 40 years now. He reviews SF -- and other books -- for
Amazon,
Infinity-Plus,
SF Site, and others.
He's a mineral exploration geologist based in Arizona.
Google "Peter D. Tillman" +review for many more of Pete's reviews.
|
