The Dragon’s Path – Daniel Abraham

The Dragon’s Path is the first book in Daniel Abraham’s series The Dagger and the Coin. On the face of it, the series promises a rich dish of the epic fantasy cuisine. The story takes place in a secondary world whose description is bound to raise pretty high the expectations of many readers. This world is a vast one, as it behooves a specimen of the genre; its history reaches thousands of years backward, when it was ruled by the ruthless dragons, who later destroyed each other in an internecine war. The dragons modified extensively – through magic or science, who knows – the genetic make-up of the Firstblood humans to spin from them twelve more races, better adapted to serve their masters’ hungry needs.

Creatures of Light and Darkness – Roger Zelazny

This text is a translation from Bulgarian. The original can be found here.

Putting Creatures of Light and Darkness into categories is a difficult task. From the point of view of genre, form, style, anyhow. Its text is seemingly messy (and remains messy under careful scrutiny), as if under the influence of light drugs. The text itself – if I can be allowed this heavy-handed personification – and not the author who produced it, as underground fan legends sometimes have it.

Creatures of Light and Darkness strikes me as a science-fictional poem. I initially attempted to bolster this argument with the kind of discursive and formally elaborate writing associated with academic literature. Then I decided against it. The reader just needs to read the first chapter – in the House of the Dead – to see the poetry, shining through, crisp and clear.