Book: The Dragon and The George by Gordon R Dickson
Krishna
The second ‘The’ in the title is not a typo. It is fully intended, and the story will tell you why.
Are you in the mood for a complex drama? Are you in the mood for an action thriller? This is not the book for you. However, if you like a fairytale story with knights and dragons (not the kind of relationships that knights usually have with dragons but still….) and if you are interested in talking wolves and transmigration of bodies – you have found the right book! It is lighthearted, does not take itself seriously and everyone in this book has the bubbling enthusiasm of a wide eyed energetic eight year old boys and girls but sometimes that is exactly the kind of variation you are looking for!
What is the story? The story starts in the modern world like any contemporary novel..
James (Jim) Eckert goes to pick up Angie Farrell from the lab where she was working. Angie’s boss Grottword, Jim suspects was also interested in Angie for himself. Angie had a doctorate in medieval history but was working part time in the lab to earn some much needed cash.
They plan to get married but need a place to live. They look at a dilapidated tractor trailer to live in but when the owner jacks up the price to double the rent, they back out. Meanwhile Jim finds that the promotion he was counting on (as assistant) is not blocked because a deputy of his boss decided not to retire after all.
He goes to pick up Angie and is furious that the boss Grottword has kept her late again. He decides it is time for a showdown with Grottword and goes up, just to see Angie in a chair with a helmet and other appendages suddenly disappear! Grottword is astounded too and says that she was not supposed to teleport, just have an astral projection!
Grottword convinces him that the only way to get Angie back is if Jim followed her to wherever she had gone but with lower power so that he can stay in the chair and just project to the target space.
He opens his eyes and he has been transported as well. He is now a dragon, chasing “the georges”! There is a conference of dragons. Jim now realizes that his dragon name is Gorbash. Now, Gorbash’s uncle Smrgol claims he is the most valiant one. A huge and brash dragon called Bryagh boasts that he captured ‘a george’ which was without its shell and was ‘peeled’. When he opens the drape on a box (which turns out to be a cage), inside Gorbash sees his beloved Angie, shivering in fear!
Yes, it is that kind of a story, silly but fun to read!
While the other dragons want to roast and eat Angie right away, Jim convinces the crowd (except Bryagh, who was outvoted and grumpy) to keep the george hostage and see what the other georges will give for this one, who seems to be a princess.
When they are alone, he tries to release Angie and tell her that he is Jim but she first is uncooperative and terrified. When she calms down a little she realizes that she can understand dragon speech and gets convinced that it is indeed Jim in the body of the dragon!
Yes, this story is fun fantasy and so illogical that you just stop thinking and go along for the ride!
She asks Jim to go talk to the “george” who is a magician and ask his help to go back to their time and their place. Jim reluctantly agrees and to his pleasant surprise finds that he is a natural at flying.
When he meets the magician Carolinus and asks him how they can go back, the magician agrees to help him but he learns from Smrgol that Bryash has kidnapped his ‘george’ and taken her to a place of old magic.
The magician warns him not to go directly to rescue Angie but go further to the land of mere dragons, who were the cousins of Smrgol and Gorbash. He does, but reaches a place where a small dragon called Secoh is trying to eat a cow but is terrified of the large dragon. Then he meets a knight in armour who is trying to kill Jim!
He befriends the young knight, who introduces himself as Sir Brian Neville-Smythe. He understands that Jim is really a human (‘knight’, so Sir James) and that he has been cursed to transform into a dragon. He is going to rescue his Lady Angela, and offers to join his Quest as his Companion.
They camp for the night on the way to get Lady Geronde’s permission for Sir Brian to go as a Companion. They are almost destroyed by sandmirks, which are tiny creatures with an unbearable chirpy sound – rather like the sirens of Odyssey, I guess. And just when it seems that all is lost, they are driven away and a wolf comes to meet them. Of course, the wolf can also talk. He is Aragh and has known Gorbash for twenty years, he tells them!
Aargh reluctantly agrees to join them, seeing how his “Gorbash” will not be dissuaded from the cockamamy pursuit of his “Lady”, a human female no less!
They meet a warrior girl Danielle, who is a friend of Aargh. She gatecrashes into the team and decides to go. So you see this is a kind of a lightweight Canterbury Tales where people join together as Companions to fight with the Big Evil.
They make a sneaky plan of gaining entry into the castle by trickery and then defeating the evil knight Hugh de Bois and rescuing Sir Brian’s Lady. But he manages to release Lady Geronde as the rightful owner of the castle.
He gets very giddy with his own strength and foolishly charges head on the armoured Hugh de Bois on a horse with a lance and almost dies. When he recovers, he sees that his attitude has changed. He then agrees to go to capture the castle of Harold and defeat him. Aragh begs off and Geronde stays back. The rest go but Jim is totally uncommunicative, wanders off alone and gets lost in the forest. He does not even care that he cannot see the others as the loneliness seems to be what he needs.
He comes to a kind of self realization when he is alone and wants now to go find his companions. Not knowing where they are, he goes to the only place he knows to find out – the house of Carolinus. There he does not meet the magician, who in true Galdalf style has proceeded to ‘right the imbalance and fight the good fight’ but meets Aragh and Smrgol meet him there with instructions from magician. There is no point in chasing after Harold anymore but he should proceed towards Loathy Tower, where Angie is kept prisoner. Cornelius and the other companions of Jim/ Gorbash would meet him there (arranged by Aragh). So Jim proceeds towards his rendezvous point.
They are trapped by the little dragon Secoh into landing while he is ambushed by Hugh himself. Only a shower of arrows by one of the companions arriving saves him on time.
They move on, with many held back. Only Brian, Jim and Aragh are able to go and once they cross a boundary towards Loathy Tower, the day grows dark, the trees are withered and everything is gloomy.
They all go to confront the evils of the tower. A lot of mythical creatures come. Sandmirks, a huge ‘mother-of-all-sandmirks’ which is confronted at a peril to his life by Aragh, and then people lost in the mist and finally together all in front of the tower. They see more sandmirks waiting to come, a huge birdlike thing with a human face and sharp teeth, a huge snail like obscene creature and a giant of an ogre, large and stong and grotesque.
All in all this is a story about a fairy tale world, and if you do not take it very seriously – and you should not if you chose to read this after seeing the cover page! – you will have a fun time with it.
The story also has some losses (don’t want to put in a spoiler here) but all in all, a good fun ride.
The author cleverly leaves room for sequels several of which have come out subsequently. Going by the original plot line, there was ‘some difficulty’ with continuing the series.
Not a heavyweight read, but still fun.
7/10
— Krishna