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Classic
fantasy with dragons and magic.
Commentary
''The Eyes of the Dragon'' is about two princes, one strong
and heroic and one weak and flawed. Peter is the older brother, destined
to be king and well suited for the job. His younger brother, Thomas, is
envious and sniveling and easy prey to the evil machinations of the
magician Flagg, adviser to the elderly and ineffectual King Roland. The
characters are often full of charm and even touching in the way that
George Lucas's characters in ''Star Wars'' are touching: friendship is the
reigning virtue; in a sense, erotic love does not yet exist.
The
book manages not to be saccharine, and Mr. King is enough in control to
display some deft self-parody (the narrator refers to the inhabitants of
Prince Peter's dollhouse as ''the King family''). There is also an
interesting authorial association with the evil magician, Flagg, who, like
Mr. King himself, is a great cataloger of horrors. In winning the young
Prince Thomas's trust, Flagg lets him in on a bit of magic: a secret room
that looks in upon the King's private chambers through the eyes of a
dragon's head that is mounted on the wall. Spying on his father through
the eyes of the dragon, Thomas not only experiences the queasy
disillusionment of the voyeur but also becomes the sole witness to Flagg's
treacherous murder of Roland. How Thomas comes to grips with this unwanted
knowledge is one of the book's themes, as is ''seeing'' in
general.
The desire to be scared is a childish impulse, belonging
to innocence rather than to experience. Frightening escapist literature
lets us escape not to a realm of existential terror - Heaven knows, there
is enough of that in our adult lives - but to the realm of childhood,
when, within some cozy setting, we were able to titillate ourselves with
fear. Scary books and movies have the comfort of being finite - we can
always close the book or walk out of the theater. With an entrepreneur's
insight, Mr. King has understood and answered a profound and popular
need.
''The Eyes of the Dragon'' also addresses the child within
the adult. To the author's credit, it is written so simply and so honestly
that the prose is only rarely sloppy or jarring. Lovers of detail will
enjoy the painstaking pencil drawings by David Palladini. -- Barbara
Tritel, New York Times
Quotes from the
Book
"The
human psyche is like a well." |
