DRAGON CAULDRON
by Laurence Yep
The further adventures of dragon Princess Shimmer (Dragon of the Lost Sea, 1982; Dragon Steel, 1985), who is still attempting to restore her lost home.
Shimmer, the Monkey wizard, the witch Civet, and two human children (Thorn and Indigo) are all seeking the Smith and his wife Snail Woman in their fabulous flying mountain: only their old magic is strong enough to repair the fabulous Dragon Cauldron so that it can once again hold the sea and pour it back to form the dragons' home. They succeed, but only after loosing a terrible evil—the Nameless One, strongest of the wicked Kings from the past—and only after Thorn loses his human life and becomes bound in the Cauldron as its soul. Writing and images here are powerful enough for this to stand on its own; Yep's strong, earthy characters are notable as individuals even when a reader coming into the middle of the sequence doesn't know their history. Meanwhile, characters from Chinese folklore—the Monkey trickster, the dragon—continue to give this ripsnorting fantasy a special flavor.
More to come.
(Fiction. 10+)