Dragon’s Bounty
Dragon’s Bounty is sold openly as a ‘historical gay fantasy adventure’ but this is misleading.
Very misleading. My first warning is not to be put off by this description. It is not a historical gay romp, far from it.
Dragon’s Bounty is a novel about Vlad III, known to all as Vlad the Impaler. The author has been fascinated by him for decades and she has set about rehabilitating him by shedding some truth on his legend and making the monster a man. Set in a the middle of the conflict that rages through Wallachia, in what is modern Romania, over the crown and the threat of the Ottomans on the eastern borders of Europe, this novel sheds light on the struggles of a country we only know of through negative press and the nightmare of Dracula. You will find no vampires here.
It is a fantasy in that the narrator of the story is the god Love, a somewhat cynical Love at the beginning who falls foul of his own trickery and falls in love with Vlad. There are some references to the physical side of gay love, but otherwise it is sensitive treatment of one person and the consuming love they feel for another – gender is inconsequential: love is love. It runs parallel to relationships that are platonic but no less intense, but actually more genuine given the underhand cause of Love’s affection for Vlad.
The author’s first language is not English with the result that the writing is not without its errors, and yes, some of them grate and leave you a little bemused. However, in some respects this adds to the other worldliness of the story and gives a sense of a country with a culture that Love does not know to start with and allows us to feel the same sense of being lost and unsure as he does. Some are merely errors. But, what lifts this novel above others is the beautiful, haunting style, the vocabulary that is carefully chosen and the word craft that is rare and unique. And as the author is not a native English speaker one can only feel admiration.
Do not let the description or the errors put you off this novel. It is wonderful and if it could be passed through a talented editor who can root out the errors and leave the artistry, it would be truly exceptional.
e-edition reviewed
