The Last Tsar's Dragons
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Vivid, gripping and actually riveting as the Red Danger takes a whole new meaning here. Loved it.” —The Book Smugglers
It is the waning days of the Russian monarchy. A reckless man rules the land and his dragons rule the sky. Though the Tsar aims his dragons at his enemies—Jews and Bolsheviks—his entire country is catching fire. Conspiracies suffuse the royal court: bureaucrats jostle one another for power, the mad monk Rasputin schemes for the Tsar’s ear, and the desperate queen takes drastic measures to protect her family.
Revolution is in the air—and the Red Army is hatching its own weapons.
Discover Russia’s October Revolution, reimagined in flight by the acclaimed mother-and-son writing team of the Locus Award-winning novel, Pay the Piper, and the Seelie Wars series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The monk Rasputin, Jewish revolutionary Bronstein, Tsarina Alexandra, and an unnamed bureaucrat share narrative responsibility in this fractured tale of a very alternate Russian Revolution. The Tsar owns black dragons, which he uses to terrorize the countryside. In an attempt to spark Lenin's revolution, Bronstein raises his own brood of red dragons. As Alexandra and the bureaucrats become more disillusioned with Rasputin's self-importance, the Red Terror takes to the skies, bringing death in its wake. This expansion of Yolen and Stemple's short story (from The Dragon Book) relegates the dragons to an undercurrent. While they remain a powerful metaphor for the proletariat and serf classes, their physical presence is diluted across the larger human cast. However, the familiar events are still made more intense by their fantastic underpinnings. The weight of the historical events is eased by the anyman bureaucrat, a masterful encapsulation of the court into an individual. History buffs and dragon fans will enjoy this mix of reality and fantasy.
