"The Eyes of the Dragon" tells the story of the kingdom Delain and the events that transpire after the old King has been ruthlessly murdered by an evil force. Prince Peter, heir to the throne, has to face this evil to save all of the realm and its people.
I´m sorry but I couldn´t come up with a more interesting blurb simply because the book hasn´t anything more to offer than this in regards to the story. This novel reads more like a fairy tale with all the stereotypes that comes along with it. And I would have been fine by that if it wasn´t for all the flaws this book has to offer. And there are a lot of flaws:
- Reading the title of the book I would have expected a story in which a dragon is prominently featured or that the dragon at least would be alive in all its menacing glory. So I was a little bit disappointed that the dragon in this story was a dead one. I´m just nitpicky about stuff like that and I´m wondering if King couldn´t have come up with a better title for the book. Maybe Kings emphasis lies on the word eyes, but if I´m reading the word dragon I´m expecting dragons (and not the stuffed variety).
- King is using some plotdevices in an overly repetitiv way. Towards the end of the book I actually screamed this at my Kindle: (show spoiler)
- I cannot make my mind up about the storyteller. I really liked him at times but his constant babbling about that this or that piece of information is important in another story and his constant foreboding of things annoyed me a lot.
- King neglects some of his characters. First and foremost Thomas who is just that bland little pushover that gets manipulated by Flagg. I´m not really seeing any developement of his character and there isn´t any redemption or atonement on his behalf. A little bit of characterdevelopement would have been nice instead of that boring "one brother is good the other one is bad (without being purely evil)" trope that King is offering here.
- And what is up with Flagg and his elaborate plan? Waiting years and years for it to come to pass and then a keyfigure in his scheme is dying and he has to wait another 70 or 80 years for a new try. And then he almost succeeds and the only thing he is doing is to sit in his rocking chair, sleeping and being oblivious to all that transpires around him. He has to be the most ridiculous evil guy ever. On the upside, he has a knack to kill rodents so maybe he should try a career as an exterminator.
Having said that the book is not all that bad, the good things being:
- Frisky
- Frisky
- Frisky
Yeah ok, the cute dog was the best thing about the book. Go figure!
There still must be a shred of my 12-year old me inside of myself because I enjoyed this book despite all its flaws. I would have loved it back then, I just know I would have. But its good to know that King is capable of writing books that are so much better than this one.
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