My recommended read this month is Dragonsbane (1985) by the versatile American author Barbara Hambly. In some ways this is a very traditional Fantasy novel populated by heroes, dragons, witches and gnomes; in others it is still ahead of its time. Dragonsbane can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story but there have been three sequels – Dragonshadow (1999), Knight of the Demon Queen (2000) and Dragonstar (2002). Collectively these novels are known as The Winterlands Quartet and they are now available again in paperback or as ebooks.

Dragonsbane is set in the once great kingdom of Belmarie. A king rules in the south but the wild northern territories known as the Winterlands have been largely abandoned. Only the Thane of Alyn Hold, John Aversin, still tries to defend his people from bandits, slave-traders, Ice Riders and monsters. When a young knight from the south called Gareth enters the Winterlands he rapidly gets into trouble and has to be rescued by a passing stanger, Jenny Waynest. She thinks of herself as a Mage but is generally known as the Witch of Frost Fell. Gareth tells her that he is on an urgent quest to find Lord Aversin, the only living man known to have slain a dragon. Jenny guides the wounded Gareth to Alyn Hold.

Based on his love for ballads, Gareth has romantic ideas of what a dragon-slayer should be like but scruffy, eccentric, spectacle-wearing John Aversin fails to live up to them. Gareth is also shocked to discover that Jenny is John’s lover and that he is raising their two sons while she concentrates on her magic. Nevertheless, Gareth begs John to go south with him to slay a huge dragon that has driven the gnomes from their underground city in the Deep of Ylferdun and is devastating the countryside close to King Uriens’ capital city of Bel. John is reluctant to leave his own people undefended and points out that the King no longer sends troops to garrison his northern border. Gareth promises John any reward he cares to name if only the Dragonsbane will use his skill and experience to kill the dragon. Mainly out of an inbred sense of loyalty to the crown, John agrees to try.

Jenny decides to go with them on their journey south. She senses that there are things that Gareth isn’t telling John and she has seen a dark vision of her lover’s possible fate. Gareth is impatient with their slow and cautious progress through the wilderness until an almost fatal encounter with some of the local inhabitants gives him new respect for John’s courage and Jenny’s spells. When they arrive in Belmarie a number of surprises await John and Jenny : the country is in the middle of a civil war, the royal court is dominated by the King’s mistress, the seductive witch, Zyerne, and Gareth is not what he pretended to be.

John and Jenny spend a frustrating period being mocked by the sophisticated courtiers of Bel and when they explore the capital city they discover that the refugee gnomes are being given a hostile reception. With little help on offer, John, Jenny and Gareth ride on towards their destiny – Morkeleb the Black, the most ancient and cunning of dragons. A brutal encounter with the dragon is only the beginning of their ordeals and Jenny finds herself with terrifying choices to make. John and Jenny will have to uncover their true enemy and forge extraordinary alliances if they are ever to return to the Winterlands.

Dragonsbane has a fairly standard post-technological medieval setting with Scotland providing some of the inspiration for the tough and courageous Winterlanders. The world of the story is developed in more depth in the later volumes of the quartet which feature feuding demons from other dimensions and explore the nature of magic and the culture of dragons. The Winterlands Quartet presents a nuanced view of morality, with only a few of the characters or races involved being shown as entirely good or entirely bad. For example, in Dragonsbane the secretive gnomes appear as persecuted innocents but in Dragonshadow we learn that some of them are callous slave-owners. Even the leading characters make serious mistakes and bad choices, just as most people do in real life. These stories constantly stress that magic, like other forms of power, comes at a high cost and that sentient beings must take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Any Fantasy fan reading my synopsis of Dragonsbane will probably be reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, in which the terrible dragon Smaug drives the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain out of their underground kingdom. I’m sure the similarity is deliberate but be assured that the plot of Dragonsbane takes a very different direction from that of The Hobbit. I would guess that Hambly might have been more influenced by Tolkien’s delightful anti-heroic novella Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) in which a practical-minded, red-bearded farmer conquers a dragon that all the King’s knights have failed to defeat. Tolkien mocks the traditional idea of dragon-slaying in which a lone knight challenges a huge fire-breathing beast to single combat and so does John Aversin in this story. He became a Dragonsbane by creeping up on a dragon that had attacked the Winterlands and weakening it with poisoned and bespelled weapons. He remembers the experience of hacking a beautiful wild creature to death as distressing rather than heroic.

This is the first hint that the dragons in The Winterlands Quartet will be more than just monsters. If, like me, you are a bit of a connoisseur of dragons in legend and Fantasy fiction, you should love these books. Hambly creates a culture, history and mythology for her dragons, including a poetic answer to the question of why dragons are so obsessed with hoarding gold. Magic is as natural to these dragons as breathing; in stark contrast to the hard-earned powers of Mages like Jenny. In the second volume of the quartet, there are some lyrical descriptions of multi-coloured dragons in joyous flight over the islands known as the Skerries of Light. The awe-inspiring Morkeleb the Black does not appear until half-way through the first volume but he is well worth the wait. He becomes a fascinating major character and goes through unexpected changes as he learns from Jenny and John about `the things that are not of dragons’ such as the many forms of human love.

The Winterlands Quartet is a sweeping epic Fantasy with some Horror elements such as cannibals, walking-dead and a highly addictive form of demon-possession, but at the heart of the story is one fragile and fallible human family – John, Jenny and their (eventually) three children. John Aversin is one of my all-time favourite Fantasy heroes. He is a formidable warrior who only ever wanted to be a scholar and an inventor. Abandoned by his Ice-witch mother and bullied by his father, John foolishly falls in love with an apprentice Mage who can never give him her whole heart or even much of her time. He agrees to live apart from Jenny, and raises their children with the help of his female relatives, but sometimes gives way to bitterness and discontent. This makes John sound like a gloomy, angst-ridden hero when in fact Hambly has given him a warm and humorous personality and an endlessly inquisitive mind. Dragonsbane John is happy to play the buffoon if it makes people underestimate him and he cheerily addresses princes, mages and demons as ‘love’. I defy you to dislike him.

Even more important and unusual is the character of Jenny. In most 20th century Sword and Sorcery novels sorceresses tended to be ageless, glamorous and scantily clad. Jenny is nothing like that. She’s a short, skinny middle-aged woman who dresses for warmth and believes that she is ugly – touchingly John always thinks of her as beautiful. Jenny is that rare thing in Fantasy – a working mother who struggles to reconcile the conflicting demands of her profession and her family. Magic is Jenny’s vocation and as with all vocations it requires a huge expenditure of time, concentration and effort to be even competent. Nothing comes easily to Jenny and in Dragonsbane she gives Zyerne the benefit of the doubt for far too long because she knows that she is jealous of the younger woman’s beauty and power. In Dragonshadow Jenny also has to cope with the unpleasant symptoms of menopause making her tired and irritable. How often do you come across that in Fantasy fiction? After many struggles and sacrifices, Jenny learns – as all older women must – that her power comes from accepting what she is in the present rather than longing for what she was in the past.

I don’t like everything about The Winterlands Quartet. Some episodes are rather repetitious and I could have done without the swerve into Science Fiction in the third volume. Where Hambly does excel is in creating complex and lovable leading characters who continue to develop throughout the series. Dragonsbane is an intriguing story on its own but I’d advise reading on because Jenny, John and Morkeleb are characters worth the investment of your time. Until next month….

Geraldine

P.S. A quick bonus recommendation for dragon-lovers – Jackie Morris’ dazzling picture book Tell Me A Dragon (2009) is made up of exquisite images of a wide range of dragons from many different cultures. It may help you to envisage the colourful dragons in The Winterlands Quartet.