The King's Dragon by Una McCormack

[purplecat]

Another Who novel and my feelings about these remain unchanged. This pretty much maintains the standard set by The Way Through the Woods. So it has a nice central idea, a little less Who-ish this time since it relies on they kind of World-building that modern Who is less keen on - a low tech, but highly peaceful society and an apparent dragon that creates gold - and then works strongly with the themes provided (in this case, the nature of desire via the character's various reactions to the Enamour metal) and provides a set of characters which refuse to be reduced to simple black and whites. There's also a cleverly humorous reveal towards the end in terms of the nature of the Regulator's people.

So why, I have to ask myself, do I continue to be dissatisfied with these books. They are not the Virgin New Adventures, I suppose, which for all their flaws had a sense of excitement and wild invention about them as the fans relentlessly took control of story. But in the case of The King's Dragon I think my issues were that characters could switch very quickly from being friend or foe, mostly underscored fairly heavily with the point "well people are not that simple". With more space I wonder if the shades of character would have been more delicately drawn. Similarly, some aspects of the story are very cursorily explained, such as Hilthe's initial resistance to the allure of Enamour and ultimately I was left with the feeling there was a better book trying to break out of the constraints imposed by the range.