Not A Big Winner

Dragons: The Greatest Stories- Edited by Martin H Greenberg

Hardcover: 307 pages
Publisher: MJF Books (August 1997)
ISBN-10: 1567311660

Cover art by: Don Maitz

Ever since Annie reviewed this book for Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge I've wanted to find the book for myself. Much to my dismay, the book seems to be out of print for I can only find it "used"...

That is....

..until...

..I happened into B. Dalton's book store who was going out of business. Low and behold... there sat this book! Needless to say I grabbed it up, even though I knew it was short stories, which are not my favorite thing.

I thought for sure since all of the stories were about Dragons I'd have to like the book! Mmmmmmmmm, well... not so much. Probably the best thing about this book is the cover! Well, no.. that's not true... there are 2 or 3 good stories in the book, but overall it's still a disappointment.

The Best in the book is a short story by Anne McCaffrey called The Smallest Dragonboy. It seems when it comes to dragons and McCaffrey, she never goes wrong. This story is about Keevan who is a young man who, like all the other young men, hope to become a dragonrider by being chosen at a hatching by a newborn dragon. He is teased constantly about how small he is, that a dragon will never choose him... and tricks are played on him in which he winds up being hurt. But hurt or not he struggles with all his might to get to the hatching when he hears it is happening... I won't tell the ending... just in case, ya know.. you read it some time!

The second best story was by Orson Scott Card, called: The Bully and The Beast. This is basically a story about a giant of a man who is made fun of, called stupid and clumsy and from when he was young, called Bork the Bully.

From first sight Bork falls in love with the Princess, but the King will do anything to be sure Bork has no chance to win his daughters hand. He sends Bork on "impossible tasks", such as sending him out alone to win a war, promising him he'd make him a Knight. When Bork stops the war the King is forced to make him a Knight. Another task he sends Bork to is to save the Princess from a dragon, a task that no knight has come back alive from. Bork is the only one to return alive from the dragon... but he did not get the princess.

Of course there is much more to the story but again.. just a teaser of what it's about.

A few stories were "eh, ok" such as ST Dragon and the George by Gordon R Dickson and some not so good.

This one is hard for me to recommend or not recommend because with so many short stories to choose from it's hard to say what you might like or not. For me, it was only a so-so book.