There Be Dragons

The Word, Book 1

By: Anthony D. Brown

Narrated by: Penelope McDonald, Jus Sargeant

Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's Summary

When fellow student John Foremile turns up at his flat on a rain-sodden winter’s night, former Merchant Navy Captain Rex Slingsby thinks he’s in for just another boozy night down the pub. John, however, has come laden with a package of ancient-looking manuscripts, and Rex is soon engrossed in reading an outlandish tale of a powerful, benevolent race of Dragons and of the human wizards hell-bent on destroying them. 

Incredulous at first, the two friends quickly find themselves embroiled in an epic quest to rescue a fertile dragon’s egg, hidden over a thousand years before in a remote cave by its desperate mother. Pitted against them is a motley crew of 12-foot Trolls, hellish hounds, and power-crazed Mafioso wizards, all of whom, it seems, will stop at nothing to bring Rex and John’s quest to a premature and deadly end. 

There Be Dragons, book one of The Word trilogy, introduces a brilliantly imagined and often disconcerting universe, sweeping listeners breathlessly along from cosy bachelor pads to desolate Welsh mountainsides; from state-of-the-art yachts to mind boggling planets thousands of light years away.

©2012, 2017 Anthony D. Brown (P)2019 Anthony D. Brown

Took a chance and was pleasantly surprised!

Normally, I’m very hesitant to purchase an audiobook on Audible without reading through at least a few pages of comments. But I just couldn’t get excited about any of the books in my wishlist right now.

So I went with There Be Dragons based solely on the description and audio sample, and I’m really glad I did. This book reminded me of a more fantasy-ish and much less disjointed Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (the book not the movie). It was engrossing, compelling and original. You do have to make it through about ten minutes of some hard to comprehend stuff in the first chapter, but from there, the story takes off and just keeps plowing forward.

I highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the fantasy genre while also being able to appreciate a story whose plot doesn’t only revolve around constant battle scenes and horribly written, pubescent, masturbatory scenarios....
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Note: from here this review quickly devolves into a tirade about my opinions on the increasing frequency with which fantasy and LitRPG authors are melding graphic porn and harem fantasies into the genres. Feel free to ignore what follows and just know that this book is more than worth your credit.

Game on...

Fortunately, this is one of the 8 or so fantasy books released on Audible this year that wasn’t written for an immature, internet porn addicted, harem obsessed audience.

In fact I just changed my overall rating to a 5 from a 4... I did this for the sole reason that lately, any author who doesn’t write hackneyed, sex scenes (which are ALWAYS clearly based on their porn habit rather than any real life experience) that have zero relevance to or bearing on the plot of their book deserve to be applauded. It’s a sad state of affairs that I feel the need to thank an author for not ruining their own work with uninspired and just unconscionably terribly, written sex scenes.

At this point in my rant I must clarify that I’m not against sex in literature, If anything I would be a proponent of it. My problem is the fact that none of the current/up-and-coming fantasy authors I’ve read or listened to lately seem to have the ability to write sex in any sort of relatable or interesting way. They don’t even bother to spend more than a sentence or two trying to make the situations plausible for the characters or relevant to the plot.

The worst part is that many of these authors can write really good stories, but end up making their own work unlistenable by thinking that the sexual aspects of their work don’t need to be every bit as crafted and considered as their characters and plotting. Most of the time I feel like I’m just getting the play-by-play of a standard cheap porno. I sit there and think this would be much better if a sports announcer (ideally Howard Cocell or Harry Carey) narrated this part of the book, at least then it would be kind of funny.

My point is that you authors out there should either get much much much better at writing sex or just knock it off and stop being creepy, because it feels like you’re just doing some weird exhibitionist thing where you’re getting off on having lonely, virginal, agoraphobic nerds furiously masturbating to your “art”.

Yep. I think I’ll leave it there.

Overall an ok story

good storyline.
struggled with last chapters.
Hard to follow & understand.
Will get book 2

Wow! Hard-core sci-fi fans will love this!

Fans of Arthur C Clark, Carl Sagan and Alistair Reynolds will love There be Dragons. A rich tapestry of hard-core sci-fi, blended with classic slapstick British comedy styles make this a great listen, with rich and thought-provoking concepts about the nature of our universe and why we are here, interspersed with fast-paced action make this a great first book in what looks to be an epic tale. The narration is split between two fantastic readers, who both bring their own unique styles to this exciting adventure. I particularly enjoyed the way the narrators are used to highlight the different timelines, as the book does jump around in time and space quite a lot, so having two narrators work on this made a lot of sense. I can’t wait to hear the second book in the series.

Brilliant 5/5

I very much enjoyed this audiobook, the narration is superb and I look forward to listening to future additions to the series.