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kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review against another edition
3.0
Crossposted at Booklikes
This takes place in a fantasy version of China. The characters are templates and overall more types than anything else. I’m not sure if I fully buy the idea of Mei and the Emperor.
That said, the world building is awesome and three characters stand out. Jiao, Han, and the dragon. Han is connected to the dragon and Jiao is a mercenary. It isn’t the best fantasy I read, but it is entertaining and fun.
This takes place in a fantasy version of China. The characters are templates and overall more types than anything else. I’m not sure if I fully buy the idea of Mei and the Emperor.
That said, the world building is awesome and three characters stand out. Jiao, Han, and the dragon. Han is connected to the dragon and Jiao is a mercenary. It isn’t the best fantasy I read, but it is entertaining and fun.
sandylender's review
1.0
I was disappointed in the novel Dragon in Chains. In this story, the mother and generals of the young emperor have forced him to flee his palace and he crosses the waters to the island of Taishu. While crossing, he purchases a fisherman’s granddaughter, Mei Feng, to be his concubine. Concurrently, a boy named Han, who has been sold after just “escaping” one form of drudgery to the pirate ship Shalla, is used in a raid on an important forge where a large slave is set free from huge chains. The slave acts as if this is the end of the world and takes Han as his new little slave (which everyone, including Han, seems okay with) and begins putting new chains on him. Back on Taishu, word spreads of the emperor’s arrival and one of the clans sends their strong young lad Yu Shan off to give their prize find—a huge and lovely chunk of jade—directly to the emperor, cutting out the jade traders and carvers and whatnot that are supposed to get their fair share of the profits involved.
Thus everything is set in motion and all sorts of horror and blood and guts and raping and pillaging take place to show us what a horrible bunch of cretins the rebels are who are against the emperor. I should point out that Fox does a good job with description. The reader is left with no doubt that people are out for whatever they can get, except the main characters, who seem to be passively living among all the hate and evil and gore, expecting to get carved up at any time. This left me searching for a character to root for; and I found myself aching for the release of the dragon who caused a tsunami when she stirred beneath the waters, testing the strength of the chains she’d felt weaken. Ah, there’s the plot. Sort of.
Even when Yu Shan made a sudden turn from apathetic and passive to a superhero-like, jade-eating warrior fighting for his life and the lives of others that he suddenly seemed to love (although that might be too strong of a word to describe his feelings for Jaio or the emperor), I just couldn’t bring myself to care whether people in the novel lived or died. Han seemed so sniveling and powerless throughout most of the novel that I was stunned when he seemed to profess (to himself) that he cared about a doctor’s niece and her fate aboard the ship where he had merely passed his days in a sort of comatose existence.
Does this review seem to ramble? That is the style of the novel. Fox rambled through the tales of several characters who didn’t all meet up at the end, but whose lives (mostly) eventually proved entwined by the rising up of the enormous dragon who drowned or ate the rebels who would have made the story longer had they been allowed to land and confront the young emperor’s army on the island of Taishu. (Although some rebels already had confronted the emperor in a scene that reminded me greatly of Yertle the Turtle—he was king of the mud, for mud was all he could see.)
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this book to just anybody. I wish it had lived up to the text on the back cover for me. I was pleased with the fantasy element of jade imbuing power to one who eats it, but I wish the story had included more of the dragon or a fantastic character I could have rooted for as well. Now, to be fair, I want to say again that Fox did an excellent job with description, making scenes easy to visualize. He also used a very relaxed approach to grammar and structure, letting the reader see the language on the page in much the same way we tend to speak. It gave a conversational, easy tone to the novel.
Thus everything is set in motion and all sorts of horror and blood and guts and raping and pillaging take place to show us what a horrible bunch of cretins the rebels are who are against the emperor. I should point out that Fox does a good job with description. The reader is left with no doubt that people are out for whatever they can get, except the main characters, who seem to be passively living among all the hate and evil and gore, expecting to get carved up at any time. This left me searching for a character to root for; and I found myself aching for the release of the dragon who caused a tsunami when she stirred beneath the waters, testing the strength of the chains she’d felt weaken. Ah, there’s the plot. Sort of.
Even when Yu Shan made a sudden turn from apathetic and passive to a superhero-like, jade-eating warrior fighting for his life and the lives of others that he suddenly seemed to love (although that might be too strong of a word to describe his feelings for Jaio or the emperor), I just couldn’t bring myself to care whether people in the novel lived or died. Han seemed so sniveling and powerless throughout most of the novel that I was stunned when he seemed to profess (to himself) that he cared about a doctor’s niece and her fate aboard the ship where he had merely passed his days in a sort of comatose existence.
Does this review seem to ramble? That is the style of the novel. Fox rambled through the tales of several characters who didn’t all meet up at the end, but whose lives (mostly) eventually proved entwined by the rising up of the enormous dragon who drowned or ate the rebels who would have made the story longer had they been allowed to land and confront the young emperor’s army on the island of Taishu. (Although some rebels already had confronted the emperor in a scene that reminded me greatly of Yertle the Turtle—he was king of the mud, for mud was all he could see.)
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this book to just anybody. I wish it had lived up to the text on the back cover for me. I was pleased with the fantasy element of jade imbuing power to one who eats it, but I wish the story had included more of the dragon or a fantastic character I could have rooted for as well. Now, to be fair, I want to say again that Fox did an excellent job with description, making scenes easy to visualize. He also used a very relaxed approach to grammar and structure, letting the reader see the language on the page in much the same way we tend to speak. It gave a conversational, easy tone to the novel.
jen1110's review
3.0
This is a pretty good book. I'd call it a Chinese fairy tale, but there are no fairies. There's jade, an emperor, a dragon, and people who get caught up in events bigger than they are. It's incredibly well-told and an interesting story.
I can't tell if it's the start of a series or not. The book doesn't say specifically, but events are left open at the end for more story to be told. The cover claims that this is an "epic", but at less than 400 pages, I don't think it can fall into that group.
All in all, this is one that's worth reading.
I can't tell if it's the start of a series or not. The book doesn't say specifically, but events are left open at the end for more story to be told. The cover claims that this is an "epic", but at less than 400 pages, I don't think it can fall into that group.
All in all, this is one that's worth reading.
teawolf's review
4.0
It felt kind of distant, like the telling of a legend. There was not much to connect to, but the ideas were grand and the writing is beautiful. I found this to be a very refreshing fantasy.
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