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Dragon Weatherby Lawrence Watt-Evans
Tor; New York, NY; 400 pgs; Hardcover; $25.95
They say life isn't fair. They say it's hard and cruel and that your best bet is to muddle through it all, playing the safe cards. But what happens when Fate stacks the deck against you, then deals you a losing hand? According to Lawrence Watt-Evans's Dragon Weather you must make life fair by raging, fighting, and seeking justice in those who wronged you.
At the tender age of 11 Arlian witnesses the decimation of his entire village. Friends and family alike burn under dragon flame. While pinned under his grandfather's body and unable to move, drops of blood mixed with dragon's venom drips from grandfather's skull into Arlian's mouth causing him to wretch and heave, unknowingly changing him forever. He will come to find out that he is now a dragonheart; long-lived and immune to disease, healing rapidly from injuries with little or no scarring. This accident will serve him well in the following painful years.
Hours pass and looters, intent on stealing from the dead, arrive and save the boy. Unfortunately, his salvation is short-lived as he's swiftly sold into the slave mines of Deep Delving.
Seven years pass. Seven years of darkness. Seven years of digging. And through ironic twist of Fate, Arlian escapes the mines. He makes an oath to himself, swearing by all that he holds sacred, to find the men who made a profit from his life, hunt them down, and kill them. After this is accomplished, he plans to go after the dragons that orphaned him. An ambitious enough scheme for a young man who has never been beyond the borders of his now ruined village, never seen a sword, much less hefted one.
Cold, hungry, and confused, Arlian is taken in by a rag-rag band of woman working in the House of Carnal Society. (Prostitute-slaves, really, their feet chopped off at the ankle so they can't run away. Truly, a grisly and torturous method of keeping such slaves from wandering off!) Through the winter these sweet women teach this young man how the world works and what is expected of him. They show him how to dress and behave like a lord so that he may move about freely and get close to those he's spent a lifetime hating.
Arlian works his way up the societal ladder of Manfort (the main hub of human society in Watt-Evan's wonderful world), eventually meeting his foes, the looting lords, on level ground. Seeking to satiate his need for justice, Arlian discovers that there is much more at stake that a single boy's need for vengeance. Why had the dragons attacked his little village? How had the looters arrived mere hours after the attack when the closest town was days away? Who is the mysterious leader of the looters who calls himself Lord Dragon? How is he controlling the Duke of Manfort and what is his connection to the House of Carnal Society? Now that he is a dragonheart, does this mean he is tainted somehow and may lose his humanity? Each answer raises more questions, and every question drives Arlian's desire for justice deeper and deeper, focusing it into obsession.
A thoroughly entertaining read from page one, Dragon Weather, is fast-paced and action-packed. Lawrence Watt-Evans delivers a world brimming over with magic and mystery, duels and danger. And the best part is: The end is only the beginning.
(Originally published in Realms of Fantasy magazine, December 1999.)
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