Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Guile of Dragons
    Unavailable
    A Guile of Dragons
    Unavailable
    A Guile of Dragons
    Ebook351 pages5 hours

    A Guile of Dragons

    By James Enge

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    It's dwarves vs dragons in this origin story for Enge's signature character, Morlock Ambrosius! Before history began, the dwarves of Thrymhaiam fought against the dragons as the Longest War raged in the deep roads beneath the Northhold. Now the dragons have returned, allied with the dead kings of Cor and backed by the masked gods of Fate and Chaos. The dwarves are cut off from the Graith of Guardians in the south. Their defenders are taken prisoner or corrupted by dragonspells. The weight of guarding the Northhold now rests on the crooked shoulders of a traitor's son, Morlock syr Theorn (also called Ambrosius). But his wounded mind has learned a dark secret in the hidden ways under the mountains. Regin and Fafnir were brothers, and the Longest War can never be over... From the Trade Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPyr
    Release dateSep 4, 2012
    ISBN9781616146290
    Unavailable
    A Guile of Dragons

    Related to A Guile of Dragons

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Path Through the Woods

      May 30, 2023

      A Path Through the Woods
      3 min read

    • Article

      Concerning The Future Of Souls

      Mar 19, 2024

      As a toddler she had caused a sensation in her family when she announced she wanted to live in a little hole like the ant. Not an ant, the ant. This might have been misheard. She was an easygoing child, not particularly thoughtful and stubbornly inar

      13 min read

    • Article

      Hope Springs

      Feb 22, 2021

      The Thin Places in the title of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s intense memoir-cum-nature book are “places where a veil is lifted away and light streams in”. They are pools of stillness in a “broken, burning and bleeding world”. They are remote havens where t

      2 min read

    • Article

      See How They Nun

      Mar 22, 2024

      What are we going to do about global heating, about mass extinction, about our rivers? What ability do we have to change things, now that power lies mostly in the hands of unaccountable corporations and shameless demagogues? Is there even any point i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Devil’s Taxi

      Oct 6, 2022

      The Devil’s Taxi
      26 min read

    • Article

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • Article

      To Save Arrhinsal

      Nov 1, 2021

      Tolin lives on Arrhinsal, an island that floats in the sky two miles above the land below. One day, while hunting in the maze of tunnels that run through the island’s thick hedges, he encounters a girl who, her sword raised, has turned to face a huge

      6 min read

    • Article

      10 Literary Witches To Hex Trump

      Mar 24, 2017

      In case you hadn’t heard, witches across America—including Lana Del Rey—are uniting to take down Trump via a binding spell, which calls on the spirits to keep the President from doing harm (it already seems to be working). Covens, communities, and so

      5 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of . . .

      Mar 1, 2019

      In Search Of . . .
      7 min read

    • Article

      To Save Arrhinsal

      Sep 1, 2021

      TOLIN CRAWLED FORWARD, staying alert. All around, the dense, wiry thickets of the hedge were strangely silent. That usually meant danger, when the green tangle of thorns should be cheery with the songs of finches, the dusky clucking of hedge hens. On

      8 min read

    • Article

      Form Seven Alpha

      Oct 10, 2023

      So here I sit with it again, Form 7⍺. It is printed on cheap paper with low-quality ink that smudges under my fingers. The option they judge least bad for me has been scored through, unavailable, while the four other options remain. Since the last ti

      26 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I’m looking at a photograph of a bearded Romaine Tenney on his hay mowerhitched to draft horses in a half-cut field. Tenney, whose Vermont farm was slatedto be swallowed by Interstate 91, immolated himself, rather than be forciblymoved. My son says,

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Hidden Origins of Mankind

      Nov 12, 2019

      The Hidden Origins of Mankind
      8 min read

    • Article

      Retriever of Souls

      Nov 25, 2021

      What they don’t say is that, sometimes God will call you to the wilderness, gesture toward the trees, and then, hang back and wave you on alone. —“Prayer for the Wretched Among Us” from The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded At nig

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Witches Of Literature

      May 30, 2023

      Tor Books T. KINGFISHER challenges the idea of the “wicked witch” through the gravewitch in her subversive fairy tale Nettle & Bone. The nameless dust-wife—part witch, part gravedigger—is all too willing to help the novel’s heroine on her quest to ki

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 1, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Thousand Embers

      Aug 13, 2023

      The old man’s grave hung like a mist over the whole of the wops. The world was still and soundless. Even the owl that watches over this place had ceased to call its name. Ru-ru. And though it wasn’t cold, an eerie chill possessed us, our breath visib

      3 min read

    • Article

      Pats On The Back

      Dec 12, 2019

      I AM writing this column from a prone position. Reclining on my sofa in the library, propped up with cushions like some latter-day Lady Ottoline Morrell, but without the wit, brilliance and patronage. I wish I could say my current condition arose fro

      3 min read

    • Article

      'The Pursuit Of William Abbey' Travels A Twisty Path

      Nov 17, 2019

      Claire North's new book starts with a doctor witnessing an atrocity in Africa in 1884, but becomes a spy thriller, a horror story, a supernatural mystery and an indictment of capitalism and empire.

      4 min read

    Reviews for A Guile of Dragons

    3.5/5

    9 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      James Enge's A Guile of Dragons is actually the first book of a "prequel" series called A Tournament of Shadows featuring his celebrated character Morlock Ambrosius. Not having read the original books, I'm sure my experience is probably going to differ wildly from that of a reader who is already familiar with the world and character, but knowing beforehand that I was going into an origins-type story was good preparation for what to expect.Most of the book covers the life of young Morlock. We begin at a point before he is even born, then watch as he is given to the dwarves as an infant. Morlock's real father is Merlin -- yes, that Merlin -- though he is raised among the dwarven folk; as such things go, the character's struggles with his birthright and mixed feelings about his heritage eventually emerge as one of the overarching themes of the story.But on top of that, the book is also an adventure, with an ancient war between dwarves and dragons at its heart. When the dwarven territories are invaded, their defenders taken prisoner or placed under the corrupted influence of dragonspells, it falls to Morlock to protect his surrogate family and the people who raised him.This was a good story, well told in its complexity and showing of relationships between different characters, but I have a feeling I'm not clicking with it as much as I should. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with the book and I getting off on the wrong foot, with the introductory chapters throwing me off with its pacing. The sections that take place before Morlock's birth and up to the brief scenes of his childhood with the dwarves feel like they should have been a prologue, separated from the rest of the book. I understand the importance of including this time of his life as part of his backstory, but I don't know if it meshes that well with everything that comes afterward. The first part of the book felt like a running commentary on the circumstances behind Morlock's birth, resulting in a disconnect between myself and the character. Fortunately, the book really gets going once he reaches adulthood and we get into the meat of the story, when we encounter the dragons and their violent confrontations with the dwarves. What follows is a very intriguing take on the history behind the dwarven-dragon conflict, and the intricacies in the nature of the two societies. The character dynamics also pick up, and as factors like bitter resentment or shifting loyalties start to come into play, things get a lot more interesting. The author throws in a lot of surprising twists, and I have to say one of my favorite aspects of this book is how Enge incorporates elements from legend and Arthurian fantasy into the world lore. My overall feeling is that you can definitely read A Guile of Dragons on its own, but I have no doubt I'm also missing out on a lot of the subtleties. Yet despite delving into this one without any context, I was on the whole impressed. After seeing how the events of this book has shaped Morlock as a character, I admit I find myself curious about him and his future exploits.