It's always an exciting day here at Geek Speak when the word goes out for the topics for the forthcoming issue. For me, the In The Stacks topic is particularly enticing as I then get to peruse my personal bookshelves to figure out what I may have that would be worth rereading and thus reviewing and fit the category. For this month's topic – Dragons -- mine eyes fell upon the collection of short stories The Ultimate Dragon. Seemed to fit the topic rather well, I thought.

Of course, reviewing a short story collection brings up its own questions as to how a review of such should be approached. Should I make a point to discuss every single story in the collection -- a series of mini-reviews, if you will (like ordering burger sliders at a sports bar instead of an actual burger, despite the fact that doing so usually results in less meat and more bread [and possibly more money] which begs the question of why?!). Or should I focus on just a few stories... perhaps the ones that I liked the best, or the ones by the most well-known authors? Or should it just be more of a stream-of-consciousness-esque type of review where I continually ask myself rhetorical-type questions about how the review should be written and in doing so somehow make various comments on the collection overall? Considering that last option is the direction things seem to be going with anyway, who am I to argue with momentum (Darn you, Isaac Newton!!! <shakes fist>)?

So... short story collection. About dragons. That actually sums up the book pretty darn well. Do you like short stories? Do you like dragons? If the answer to both of those questions are "yes", then you'd like this collection. If the answer to both of those questions is no, then why are you even reading this review?! And if the answer to one of the questions is "yes" and the other "no" (doesn't really matter the order), then you, my friend, are quite the complicated person, aren't you?

It is always interesting going back to short story collections several years after first reading them. There are always a few stories which stick with you and others which leave your mind promptly as soon as you finish them and start on the next. But it's also interesting because certain stories may be by authors whom I was not aware of initially, but now recognize their names immediately. (As an aside, my first introduction to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, of Liaden fame [and the recipients of much love here at Geek Speak] was through a random, non-Liaden story of theirs in a short story collection). And there are certainly some big name... er... names involved in this particular collection, from Hugo award winners (Ursula K LeGuin and Robert Silverberg) to quite prolific authors from the past many decades (Tanith Lee and Harlan Ellison, amongst others). There are also newer and/or lesser known authors, such as Ian Hunter, Gordon R. Menzies, and Joanne Bertin.

As for the stories themselves, there are a wide variety of takes on dragons. Some are more standard and straight-forward, others are more abstract, perhaps even metaphorical-esque dragons. Some stories are quite the nice little compact tales, others are ones that leave you thinking "wait... what was that about?!". Pretty much just like any short story collection. But interesting takes on dragons overall.

There is one particular story, though, that always stood out to me upon first reading: Dragonlord's Justice, by Joanne Bertin. I won't go into details about the story, but suffice to say that for a short story, the author was able to create quite the vivid and intriguing world. Of all the stories in this collection, this was the one that really left me wanting more. I even remember thinking upon first reading that this story felt like a small part of a larger world, and that perhaps this was a well-known series that I just hadn't heard of. Seeing as this was initially before the time of Amazon and Wikipedia, it was not easily determined if this was, in fact, the case. Now, however, upon rereading and with the power of the internet behind me, I have learned that this story was surprisingly the very first ever written by the author. But after this story, it did, indeed, turn into a series, with the first book The Last Dragonlord being published a few years after this short story. I look forward to locating this book and seeing if the world of the short story does translate to novel form as well as I hope.

But essentially... just reread my third paragraph. Short stories. About dragons. What else do you need to know?

  -- K. Burtt