Dragon America looked like a more serious work by Mike Resnick because the cover has a nice painting rather than the typical Resnick pulp space opera artwork. I was wrong. It’s not part of his Birthright Universe books, but it is definitely an adventure tale. It doesn’t have the same qualities as Kirinyaga (the one serious
Resnick work) though. And at first I thought it would be a fantasy work in the vein of Card‘s Tales of Alvin Maker. In reality it falls somewhere in the grey area between fantasy and science fiction, very similarly to Harrison’s West of Eden. It even starts off with a bit about how the America we know as reality is the subject of an alternative universe science fiction story, just as West of Eden also uses that device in it’s appendix.
This is an alternate history novel where the premise is that dragons are real. These aren’t the fanciful dragons of myth, but instead are another class of the chordate phylum, similar to reptiles. No dragons live in Eurasia or Africa. The separation of the New World by ocean has limited the spread of dragons to those continents. There are different varieties of them, from small flying dragonkin to large plodding herbivores with vestigial wings to ferocious raptor-like meat-eaters. Like mythical dragons, some defend themselves by breathing fire, mostly the herbivores. The carnivores use claws and teeth for fighting.
The alternate history is set in the time of the American revolution. George Washington’s army is badly outnumbered and slowly being defeated by Lord Cornwallis’ Redcoats. He turns to his friend Daniel Boone to go west to form an alliance with the native American tribes. Refused by his adopted Shawnee tribe, Boone would rather not return empty-handed. So Boone heads further west with a former slave and a Shawnee in search of legendary dragons the size of houses, hoping to find a way to use these animals to the revolutionaries’ advantage.
It’s an intriguing concept and for the most part very well executed. But I have a quibble. I always have a quibble, don’t I? Resnick’s dialogue kills me. Not only to his characters think aloud, they are always clearly able to see the hidden conclusions of various actions in an analytical god-like way. The former slave, Pompey, does not have the wilderness skills of the Shawnee or Daniel Boone. And so Boone and Gray Eagle (the Shawnee) insist on explaining things in a repetitive condescending manner despite noting that they have no skill similar to Pompey’s ability to understand new languages and it’s necessity in their journey across the land of multiple tribes. A typical exchange goes like this:
- Boone
- Well, let’s go up to these house-sized dragons and touch them.
- Pompey
- But they’re huge and will kill us.
- Boone
- Of course they won’t. All the signs point otherwise.
- Pompey
- How do you know that?
- Boone
- Because they are herbivores.
- Pompey
- And yet the herbivores can defeat many predators through that hideously huge flame from the mouth thing.
- Boone
- Obviously, they won’t use it on us.
- Pompey
- They used it on our Indian guide.
- Boone
- Of course they did, that’s because he went near the dragon cub.
I am possessed of superior knowledge of how software works, at least compared to many regular joes. And yet when I have to state a conclusion about someone’s messed up computer, my conversations never resemble anything like Resnick’s characters in this book (and for that matter in Starship: Mutiny). My conversation about why we could go up close to the dragons would explain the bulk of the description in just one exchange, because if I were Daniel Boone, I wouldn’t want to be an ass and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to drag out the conversation the way he does. Only a person who wants to appear very superior does it that way. I know, because I’ve done that once or twice with people who irritated me to put them back in their place. And yet there’s no reason to put Pompey back in his place in this novel.
But if you can get past that, it’s a fun, intriguing novel.
Title: Dragon America
Author: Mike Resnick
Imprint / publisher: Phobos Impact
Format: Paperback
Length: 258 p.
Publication date: July 2005
ISBN-10: 0-9720026-9-3
Subject: Washington, George, 1732-1799 — Fiction
Subject: Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820 — Fiction
Subject: Dragons — Fiction
Subject: United States — History — Revolution, 1775-1783 — Fiction
LC classification: PS3568.E698 D73 2005
