Realms of the Dragons II

Forgotten Realms: Anthologies #10

by Philip Athans (Editor), Kameron M. Franklin (Contributor), Jaleigh Johnson (Contributor)

An all-new anthology showcasing dragons of the FORGOTTEN REALMS
world and featuring new authors.
This anthology features a range of stories by authors new to the Forgotten Realms setting writing about dragons. It fleshes out many details from Richard Lee Byers's Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy and features art work by award winning artist Matt Stawicki.

Genres: Forgotten Realms, Fantasy, Anthologies, Fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, Short Stories, Collections

246 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

I 100% support AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS
https://www.authorsagainstbookbans.com

I give every book 5 stars in protest against the concept of star ratings in general and the ever-unfolding algorithm dystopia!

Philip Athans, an anti-AI, anti-book bans liberal, is the founding partner of Athans & Associates Creative Consulting (www.athansassociates.com), and the New York Times best-selling author of Annihilation and more than a dozen other fantasy and horror books including The Best of Fantasy Authors Handbook Vol. I 2009-2013, The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Writing Monsters. Born in Rochester, New York he grew up in suburban Chicago, where he published the literary magazine Alternative Fiction & Poetry. His blog, Fantasy Author’s Handbook, is updated every Tuesday (https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com), less regularly on the FAH YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@FantasyAutho...), and you can follow him on Twitter @PhilAthans. He makes his home in the foothills of the Washington Cascades, east of Seattle.

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this set of stories better than the first one. Most of these stories were darker and more entertaining than its predecessor. Easy to get into and a super quick read.

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 3 out of 5]

’I’m all for dragon slaying, but can we really trust this heroine o’ yers?’

Rounding out The Year of Rogue Dragons series is a second anthology which (giving credit where credit is due) features a crop of new writers to the Forgotten Realms milieu. I like the new talent showcase aspect of the collection and, taken on their own merits, all the stories are entertaining, if not entirely remarkable.

My favorites include de Bie’s The Hunting Game which, though it owes a nod to Richard Connell, deftly captures the feel and banter of your average band of Dungeons & Dragons adventures (in a tale that was both bloody and sexy in all the right places). I also dug Pitrat’s The Book Dragon with its feuding wizards and culminating spat of vengeance and Jones’ The Woman Who Drew Dragons because who doesn’t like to spend time in a tavern? Honorable mention to Stroh’s The Road Home; I could have spent a whole novel in the ‘Company of the Chimera’ with its right bastard boss Tombli. This is a case where we really didn’t need a dragon; Stroh’s humanoid characters could have carried the story on their own.

The BIG problem is that like its predecessor, Realms of the Dragons II includes only ONE story that actually connects to the series that supposedly inspired it. Murray J.D. Leeder’s The Strength of the Jester is the volume's best tale – again, in my opinion -- not just as a cleverly-constructed story of betrayal, but also because it aptly captures the spirit of the main novels and nicely fills-in a little crack from the original tales (namely … why did nobody ask the elves?). It’s also the only story in the whole volume that even mentions The Rage – the casus belli for the whole dang line of books – and that feels a bit like cheating.

Compulsive story readers like myself will probably find it impossible not to finish off their Year of Rogue Dragons obsession with this, the last entry in the series. And while the stories will keep you interested, unfortunately Realms of the Dragons II is hardly essential reading.

[Stuart Schneider · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was closer to 2 1/2 stars really. There were at least 2 or 3 stories that were way too short or I could have written a much better ending for. These stories were interlaced with a few good stories that had merit. I think that perhaps when reading this I may have been slightly biased by the fact that I did not recognize any of the authors, but I don’t think my judgement about the stories themselves is inaccurate. Yes, I am aware that there is only so much you can do in a short story, but the benefits of creating a short story framework and using that to advantage outweighs the negatives in my opinion, and several of these stories failed in just the framework concept alone.

[Bernardo Blue · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's very hard to make dragon stories this boring, but the authors skillfully mastered this challenging task.

Yeah I'm salty, but come on, not even 1 good story among these?

[Jonathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I generally want to say something positive about a book, but I'm hard pressed to do so here. The best stories in this anthology were forgettable at best; the worst ones made almost no sense. The original "Realms of the Dragons" included a story about characters from the trilogy as well as some of the Realms' most famous denizens: Erevis Cale, Artemis Enteri, Mirt the Moneylender, Talbot Uskevren, etc. We don't get anything like that here. Although the tone of this anthology is darker, the authors never really capitalize on that because you spend most of your time just trying to figure out the details of the plot. To make matters worse, WotC advertises the book as having 272 pages (already pretty low), but only 246 pages contain new stories: the last 26 pages of the book are previews of other books! In other words, you can safely skip this one without missing a thing.

[BooksBooksandmoreBooks69 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't see that coming.

It was ok. But I won't bother with anymore of the series