We Three Dragons
Bill Fawcett, editor
Tor
Fiction, Anthology/Fantasy
Themes: Dragons
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Description
Christmas is a time for miracles and magic - so what better place to find a dragon? Three holiday stories featuring dragons are collected here:
The Knight, Before Christmas (Jeff Grubb) – In a fantastic parallel to “A Visit from St. Nicholas” comes the story of a holiday truce between a
knight and a dragon.
The Christmas Dragon (James M. Ward) – The town of Ding, known for its golden bells, unwittingly wakens the wrath of the fire dragon Lava with its
incessant holiday cheer.
Wrathclaw’s Wyrmtide (Ed Greenwood) – Wrathclaw, the most feared dragon of the land, finds his winter’s rest interrupted by magical visions of his
long past, lonely present, and grim future.
Review
Once again, I guess I'm just not a huge fan of anthologies. In its favor, at least all three of these are actually about dragons, not metaphors or misrepresented alternate beasts (unlike some dragon story collections I've read.) Otherwise, all three suffer from the same problem, in that they're mostly thin retellings of other stories or overworked holiday themes rather than their own, original tales. The first reads like an excuse for Grubb to rewrite the popular Christmas poem with a dragon-and-knight motif, ending with a very obvious "twist." The second had a tedious setup and ran far too long once it was clear where the story was going; a good chunk of that length was Ward reprinting Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Bells" in large, distracting chunks throughout the text. The third... well, it should be obvious which holiday classic Greenwood based Wrathclaw's long winter night upon, though of the three I thought it showed the most originality in retelling its tale and creating a dragon culture in which to tell it. None of the stories are horrible, though The Christmas Dragon tried my patience more than once. In any event, I found it at a deep discount, so I suppose I got my money's worth in that respect.