Book Review: The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Before I read The Great Hunt I took a short trip down into Stephen King land. The only King book to date that I've read was The Stand and that was back in my early days of high school. I recieved The Eyes of the Dragon as a christmas gift and figured it a good starting point to get back into the heavier reading of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. What I found in The Eyes of the Dragon was a book I couldn't put down for very long.

The Eyes of the Dragon

The Eyes of the Dragon is a quick jump into the world of Delain where stories of dwarves and dragons are used to scare the children. All that changes on a simple hunting trip when King Roland's party comes across a young dragon. This doesn't end well for the dragon who ends up becoming another trophy mounted on Roland's wall.

The story just takes off from there. Stephen King's ability to portray real and fascinating characters is evident. The more you learn about the characters the more you can relate to them.

The reading is good albeit simple in places. However, this doesn't detract from the book at all. It is evident that King is not trying to create an epic masterpiece with a perfect world. He relies on the readers general knowledge of fantasy settings. A mage is someone who uses magic. A dragon has a nine chambered heart. These are all things King didn't need to create for his story and are borrowed from Fantasy 101.

The only disapointment comes from the ending which to me was a two fold monster. On one side it was a great way to end the book. On the other side the events leading up to it kind of left me wanting something else. Certain events are just a bit far stretched (even for fantasy standards) in a book where most of the story is rock solid.

Overall the book was a gem and a great find from a non-epic fantasy writer.