Dragens tårer

Horngudens tale #1

by B. Andreas Bull-Hansen

Karain er født med tre fingre på hver hånd og hår i ansiktet, og da et skip seiler inn med rykter om demoner, blir han fordrevet fra sitt folk. Evigvinteren strekker seg stadig lenger ut over verden, og Karain drar for å finne roten høvdingen Gamle må ha for å rope på våren. Samtidig forvandles han og blir Fuglemannen, profeten klippefolket har ventet på i generasjoner.

Genres: Fantasy

180 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

This author also writes under the pen name Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen.

Reviews

[Vilde Ulriksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

En vakker fantasysaga med fascinerende skapninger og mytologi. Aller best likte jeg skogvordene, og jeg skulle gjerne ha lest flere historier om dem. Karains reise er både spennende og rørende.

[Andre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two things first, that I must write since they influenced the reading experience of this book:
1) I read this book as an "antidote" against reading the awful "Clockwork Prince" and partially "Clockwork Princess" by Cassandra Clare and as you know, dry bread can be a feast to a starving man.
2) The version I bought is not only a German translation but it also was so cheap because it is a "book of poor quality", meaning during the translation or printing there have been mistakes that lower the value. Which could explain some odd word choices or some other things, like that the protagonist Karain's face was first described as hairy but that he was called feather face and in the last third of the book suddenly the "Gamle" was where he could not have been.
So readers of my review should keep in mind that my assessment of this book might not be as reliable as it might seem based on my ratings and all.

Now, as this is out of the way, what do I think of this book?
I liked it. I hadn't read it for many years and now read it again and not only did I remember lots of it despite this time having read it only for the second time but I still liked it and there weren't many flaws with it.
I guess some moments of foreshadowing I would have seen this time even without knowing the book from before. It is after all a book that seems to be targeted more towards people in their early teens.
And regarding the writing: I asked a coworker and she confirmed that the book had good prose like the voices travelled from one hut to the next like birds, and I wasn't just prose-starved from reading the Cassandra Clare books.
There were some elements of this book that seemed a tad too much like pure plot convenience, like Karain being able call upon his "twin" Kragg or how the Kretter army actually went through the 10 days snow storm to lay siege to the cliff castle, and they could be considered slightly Gary Stu like. However I think it would have made less sense had they not been included and I doubt that Karain is a Gary Stu since his mistakes are openly acknowledged as such and Gary Stus never look like Karain doesKarain is 13 years old, has a cleft lip, only 3 clawed fingers on each hand and has a face covered with black hair/feathers (the confusion on whether feathers or hair could be due to a translation error that lowered the commercial value of this book). Later he even develops more feathers along his body and towards the end of the book he is literally a big raven man.
The characters were on the complexity level that you could expect for a book for early teens but they are not so two dimensional that it would insult your intelligence. Also there are elements of differing cultural gender norms and especially the woodland spirits often have customs that seem funny or bizarre to humans, but they flash them out as actual beings within this universe. Plus its especially funny that these not even 30 cm high spirits are the only thing that the giant trolls fear.
Now, there is one big flaw of the plot however. You see since I read this a second time I have spotted a big plothole: the narrator is obviously the older version of the protagonist. So how, does he know certain things? His parents did not tell him what happened in Krugant or what they talked about and there is no mentioning of him hearing anything, so how does he know that? Some things that happened to the woodland spirits while he wasn't there, he knows because they told him, but what his parents did he could not know There are also some slight elements of colorism (like with the Kretter and Tuurer, but one of Karain's predecessors was a Tuurer so maybe it wasn't that strong and perhaps it's due to them being based on Arab Muslims during their slave owner days as well as the Tuaregs or Bedouins).
All in all the writing was mostly good and let the images easily come to live in front of my inner eye. The story progresses smoothly, the author didn't waste time or space for pure descriptions and exposition (instead he gives us the necessary information via in-book stories and legends) and the story is a nice read. All in all this is one of the better examples of Young Adult literature that I have read so far.

[Psam Ferdinand]

Generell kommentar: Husker dessverre ikke så mye av innholdet men husker veldig godt denne tiden fra norsk forlagshistorie der fantasy skulle markedsføres. I løpet av en periode på noen år ble alle norske, amerikanske og engelske fantasybøker som ble utgitt i Norge, levert med nesten identisk design på omslaget, bortsett fra illustrasjonen selvsagt. Plasseringen av tittelen, skrifttype osv. gikk igjen på de fleste av bøkene, som vanligvis kom direkte i salg i rimelige hardcover-utgaver uten smussomslag; det fantes altså ikke dyre nye utgaver og heller ikke senere utgitt, heftede utgaver. Denne tiden kjennetegnet også den spesielle idéen med å dele opp bøker som allerede ble skrevet som serier. Det vil si at bok 1 i en oversatt serie ble solgt som "1, del 1" og "1, del 2". Et godt eksempel er "Tidshjulet" av Robert Jordan. Om det var grådighet som var inne i bildet vet jeg ikke, men penger spilte en stor del, for hvis en begynte på en av seriene oversatt til norsk (for det ble plutselig mange å velge mellom), så kunne en risikere at man ikke ble ferdig siden flere av oversettelse brått og uanmeldt ble avsluttet. Jeg husker godt at biblioteket hadde på utstilling mange begynnende serier men at det etter hvert ikke kom inn flere etterfølgere. Dette var grunnen til at jeg begynte å lese mer på engelsk, siden det var eneste måten å få med seg hele serien i "The Wheel of Time". - - - - Ferdinand.

[Lojosang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Når man blir vant til fortellerstemmen uti andre kapittel et sted er dette en velskrevet bok for barn fra ti til hundre.