Taming the Dragon

by Dan Armstrong

The giant hydroelectric dam in the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River has been controversial since construction began in the early 1990s; but now, as it nears completion some two decades later, a warm winter and a diminished Himalayan snowpack have cut the Great River’s volume by half, bringing all the critics worst fears to realization… German hydrologist Hans Fruehauf is sent to China to assess problems at the dam for one of the project’s big investors. Hans decides to travel the length of the Yangtze to view and analyze the altered watershed. Yet what begins as an engineering study of the serpent-like river rapily becomes a dangerous voyage into the Asian underworld and a dark forbidden romance.

180 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2007

About the author

: Dan Armstrong is a novelist and the owner and operator of the website Mud City Press, an online magazine focusing on the environment and sustainable agriculture.
Dan has published nine novels through Mud City Press. Two, Taming the Dragon (2007) and Prairie Fire (2007), are fast-moving suspense stories written with an environmental backdrop. Puddle of Love (2009) is a racy, contemporary mystery/ghost story set in a brothel in eastern Oregon. Chain of Souls (2010) is an historical novel set in India 1948 after the death of Gandhi. The Eyes of Archimedes Book I: The Siege of Syracuse (2013) , The Eyes of Archimedes Book II: The Death of Marcellus (2015), and The Eyes of Archimedes Book III: Zama (2017) are an historical trilogy set during the Second Punic War (218-202 BC).
Cornelia: The First Woman of Rome (2018) is another historical novel set in Rome (135-121 BC). It follows the life of Cornelia Scipionis and her three children during the first years of the Republic's demise. Blake College (2019) is a supernatural mystery set in Eugene, Oregon in 1970. The Jewel Case (2020) is a historical fiction based on Sigmund Freud's controversial "Dora: An Anaylsis of a Case of Hysteria." Dan has also published an edgy collection of short stories The Open Secret and Twelve Other Tales of the Unknown (2014) .

Dan graduated from Princeton University in 1972 with a BSE in Aerospace Engineering and has been a free-lance writer since 1980. He has published articles in the Register Guard, the Oregonian, the Eugene Magazine, the North Coast Times Eagle, the Eugene Weekly, Locally Grown, Oregon Tilth Magazine, the Landwatch Newsletter, Acres USA, and numerous websites. He is the staff writer for the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project. He served for three years on the board of directors for the Lane County Farmers’ Market and was also as a member of the Lane County Food Policy Council from 2008 to 2011. Dan won the Wayne Morris Now Award for community service in 2010. Dan lives in Eugene, Oregon with his wife Judith and has a 32 year-old son, Tyler.

Reviews

[S. Barckmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan Armstrong's "Taming the Dragon" is a very good read. It tells the tale of an engineering consultant who is assigned to look at the Three Gorges Dam for some German investors back just before the huge dam was completed. It is really about the Chang Jiang (长江) or as it is often called in English, the Yangtze River. The Yangtze drains the slopes of the Himalayas, rushes passed Sichuan province through the heart of China's rice belt finally draining into the Pacific near Shanghai. Armstrong takes us up the river into the heart of China literally and figuratively. It is a great story about fixation and desire for both the narrator and China itself. It was set 30 years ago, so much of the story might seem dated because China doesn't need foreign investors to complete its mega engineering projects anymore. But still, there is a universal theme to the story. Like W. H. Hudson's "Green Mansions" also a story about a trip up a river, it shows what happens when we come face to face with our illusions and discovery that ordinary reality is really much more enticing.

[Doranne Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just completed reading Prairie Fire, having read Taming The Dragon first. I am very impressed!!!
I think these books are very well written, and real page-turners. I think they would make great action-packed movies. Dan Armstrong has expertly interwoven many  human and earth conditions/issues into these stories.
I will never look at the world quite the same again!