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Dragons for Beginners: Ancient Creatures in a Modern World
Welcome to Dragon Country! Here Dragonfire sears the grass and the wind dances with Dragon-song. Here you'll find true Dragons, real flesh-and-blood creatures that are as fiercely alive and majestic as they were thousands of years ago. This essential, comprehensive introduction to Dragons is filled with what everyone must know about these extraordinary creatures. Whether a casual dracophile or a dedicated Dragon keeper, come explore what Dragons have to teach us about the world and our-selves. Discover how, with care and devotion, you can help save them from extinction.
- GenresDragons
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2012
8 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
Shawn MacKenzie
11 books11 followersShawn MacKENZIE is a life-long student of the strange and mysterious—myths, arts, religions, sciences, the occult—as well as all creatures, seen and unseen, real, cryptic, great, and small. She’s the author of The Dragon Keeper’s Handbook, Dragons for Beginners, Llewellyn’s Little Book of Dragons, and the upcoming Tarot of Dragons, as well as numerous essays and fictions. Minnesotan by birth, she now lives in the shadow of the Green Mountains with ten cats, a guinea pig, and an Amazon parrot.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 15, 2013
I don't even know how to classify this. It's sold as nonfiction, part of the "For Beginners" series designed to give basic information about a wide variety of topics--numerology, psychic skills, feng shui, that sort of thing. They're no-frills titles, quickly produced, inexpensive, with no illustrations or other extras. We sell a lot of these titles at the store where I work, but this is the first one I've read myself. From what I can tell, though, it doesn't really fit the series. Because this book is actually fiction.
MacKenzie has written this as if dragons were real. Readers are encouraged to seek out dragons in the wild, provide stopovers for migrating dragons, and even keep one or two in the backyard. There's information about how to feed hatchlings and what to do about getting your backyard dragon plenty of exercise. But this isn't very useful, because, see, there aren't really a bunch of dragons flying around out there.
Even as fiction it's sort of a fail, because:
a) The information included is incomplete and vague. If I'm going to keep a dragon out back, I'll need to know what to do with the dragon dookie. If dragons were real, there would be a lot more detail about their varieties, habits and care.
b) It's overwritten. "Oh, what a barren dystopia we would live in if the skies did not crackle with Dragonfire, the air not ripple with Dragonsong." Yikes. The whole book is full of this kind of prose.
c) If there's a point, it's about environmental nagging. "Just because you've never seen a blue-horned tzeltal doesn't make you blameless of their deaths when you clear-cut their rain forest." The author just throws out these dragon names in passing; there's nothing about blue-horned tzeltals elsewhere in the book, so I have no idea what that is. More to the point, there's nothing to this but guilt-inducing nonsense. I haven't clear-cut any rain forests lately that I know of, and if I had, one thing I wouldn't be worried about is the extinction of some species that never existed in the first place.
What I was hoping for in this book was a compilation of folklore about dragons from various cultures, comparing and contrasting. Maybe with some stories would be included, but they'd be presented as illustrations of the way people in various times and places have defined and thought about dragons. Yes, there's some of that, but it's so basic that I didn't learn much I didn't already know.
I suspect this approach worked better in MacKenzie's other published book, The Dragon Keeper's Handbook. It looks like a better presentation of the same sort of fanciful information, with illustrations and more detail. If you're going to create fictional nonfiction, might as well go all out! It just doesn't fit well with the no-frills For Beginners series.
MacKenzie has written this as if dragons were real. Readers are encouraged to seek out dragons in the wild, provide stopovers for migrating dragons, and even keep one or two in the backyard. There's information about how to feed hatchlings and what to do about getting your backyard dragon plenty of exercise. But this isn't very useful, because, see, there aren't really a bunch of dragons flying around out there.
Even as fiction it's sort of a fail, because:
a) The information included is incomplete and vague. If I'm going to keep a dragon out back, I'll need to know what to do with the dragon dookie. If dragons were real, there would be a lot more detail about their varieties, habits and care.
b) It's overwritten. "Oh, what a barren dystopia we would live in if the skies did not crackle with Dragonfire, the air not ripple with Dragonsong." Yikes. The whole book is full of this kind of prose.
c) If there's a point, it's about environmental nagging. "Just because you've never seen a blue-horned tzeltal doesn't make you blameless of their deaths when you clear-cut their rain forest." The author just throws out these dragon names in passing; there's nothing about blue-horned tzeltals elsewhere in the book, so I have no idea what that is. More to the point, there's nothing to this but guilt-inducing nonsense. I haven't clear-cut any rain forests lately that I know of, and if I had, one thing I wouldn't be worried about is the extinction of some species that never existed in the first place.
What I was hoping for in this book was a compilation of folklore about dragons from various cultures, comparing and contrasting. Maybe with some stories would be included, but they'd be presented as illustrations of the way people in various times and places have defined and thought about dragons. Yes, there's some of that, but it's so basic that I didn't learn much I didn't already know.
I suspect this approach worked better in MacKenzie's other published book, The Dragon Keeper's Handbook. It looks like a better presentation of the same sort of fanciful information, with illustrations and more detail. If you're going to create fictional nonfiction, might as well go all out! It just doesn't fit well with the no-frills For Beginners series.
May 13, 2021
I do believe in dragons. I've met and spoken with a few. I would not heed any information in this book.
May 26, 2014
This book is a disgrace. It's part of a series of books for beginners, published by Llewellyn, to a group of metaphysical subjects such as tarot cards, the I-Ching, and scrying, to name a few. It's half a history book, half a guidebook.
Not only is it not much like a guidebook at all, but it lacks a huge amount of information about every bit that the author rambles about, including the history. Forget faux scientific facts--the author tells us to "leave it up to our imaginations" more often than is safe for something meant to give you a great deal of information about a subject.
Too often, the author brings up a common myth about dragons (they are immortal, they hoard treasure, etc.), then turns on it to claim its falseness, all without any science or evidence. Faux as dragons might be, to do this still needs some kind of close-to-real science and fact, or else it sounds like self-important tripe.
She contradicts far too often, saying dragons spend quite a deal of time away from nests, but then implies finding a nest without a dragon nearby is likely abandonment or death. Or that they need great deals of space but apparently will be content with "a roof over their head". Or that you could get a lovely dragon egg to raise, but oh, by the way, they're rare as "an orchid in Antarctica". With contradictions happening so often in every single chapter of the book (possibly none happening in the history section chapters), I could hardly vote this a good guide to anything, much less something that requires a bit more real-world explanation to make the myths therein seem believable.
The worst part of this book is the final chapter, where it explains about keeping one. More so because it so strongly clashes with the other books in the For Beginners series, the author outright says "you are not a dragon keeper" if the reader may not quite fit into what is seen as a good dragon keeper, as though people cannot change or alter their surroundings. To me, that sounds like dashing someone's interests--not the spirit of any guidebook I've ever read. None of the other For Beginners books condemn their reader in such a way, and are typically supportive of anyone wishing to learn about its subjects. The idea that humans are so openly detested in this book leaves an awful flavour in the mouth--regardless of the book's subject matter being imaginary, there's some wicked bias happening all over. If the attempt was to make some kind of history book of dragons, it's failed by letting in this bias which (at least honourable) history books don't posses. If this was an attempt at a guidebook, it failed there, too, lacking in everything from at least feasible information and reasoning to concise, clear instructions, as well as a failure to implement the wonderment of dragons being real. Instead, she claims they're real, and then cannot give even somewhat realistic, feasible data to substantiate it.
If you like things mystical and mysterious and not explained to you, as well as constant contradictions, and a healthy criticism of human beings, this book is for you. But honestly, the Dungeons and Dragons Draconomicon is a better read than this book.
On a personal note, I got awfully tired of the excessive use of the word "draconic" by the second chapter, and it never let up.
Not only is it not much like a guidebook at all, but it lacks a huge amount of information about every bit that the author rambles about, including the history. Forget faux scientific facts--the author tells us to "leave it up to our imaginations" more often than is safe for something meant to give you a great deal of information about a subject.
Too often, the author brings up a common myth about dragons (they are immortal, they hoard treasure, etc.), then turns on it to claim its falseness, all without any science or evidence. Faux as dragons might be, to do this still needs some kind of close-to-real science and fact, or else it sounds like self-important tripe.
She contradicts far too often, saying dragons spend quite a deal of time away from nests, but then implies finding a nest without a dragon nearby is likely abandonment or death. Or that they need great deals of space but apparently will be content with "a roof over their head". Or that you could get a lovely dragon egg to raise, but oh, by the way, they're rare as "an orchid in Antarctica". With contradictions happening so often in every single chapter of the book (possibly none happening in the history section chapters), I could hardly vote this a good guide to anything, much less something that requires a bit more real-world explanation to make the myths therein seem believable.
The worst part of this book is the final chapter, where it explains about keeping one. More so because it so strongly clashes with the other books in the For Beginners series, the author outright says "you are not a dragon keeper" if the reader may not quite fit into what is seen as a good dragon keeper, as though people cannot change or alter their surroundings. To me, that sounds like dashing someone's interests--not the spirit of any guidebook I've ever read. None of the other For Beginners books condemn their reader in such a way, and are typically supportive of anyone wishing to learn about its subjects. The idea that humans are so openly detested in this book leaves an awful flavour in the mouth--regardless of the book's subject matter being imaginary, there's some wicked bias happening all over. If the attempt was to make some kind of history book of dragons, it's failed by letting in this bias which (at least honourable) history books don't posses. If this was an attempt at a guidebook, it failed there, too, lacking in everything from at least feasible information and reasoning to concise, clear instructions, as well as a failure to implement the wonderment of dragons being real. Instead, she claims they're real, and then cannot give even somewhat realistic, feasible data to substantiate it.
If you like things mystical and mysterious and not explained to you, as well as constant contradictions, and a healthy criticism of human beings, this book is for you. But honestly, the Dungeons and Dragons Draconomicon is a better read than this book.
On a personal note, I got awfully tired of the excessive use of the word "draconic" by the second chapter, and it never let up.
March 25, 2014
If you are a lover of Dragons and wish to find out more different kinds of Dragons, their traditions and what Dragons have which powers and what they can do. This is the book for you!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews