“Had taken The Dragon Waiting and written a sequence of five books based in that world, with that power, he would’ve been George R.R. Available for the first time in nearly two decades, with a new introduction by New York Times-bestselling author Scott Lynch, The Dragon Waiting is a masterpiece of blood and magic. Together they will wage an intrigue-filled campaign against the might of Byzantium to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester-and make him Richard III. In a snowbound inn high in the Alps, four people meet who will alter fate. Wait.“The best mingling of history with historical magic that I have ever seen.”-Gene Wolfe But I’m long since spoiled by two-day shipping on Amazon, and I. I skipped right past bidding and hit Buy Now. There were pictures of the actual book, so I feel pretty good about it. There I found what better damn well be a first printing. The copies I had seen were presumably second printings. Avon replaced the first printing cover art by Sanjulian with cover art by Ken Barr. It turns out that Avon Books used two covers. So I moved on to that indispensable resource, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Just an image, not a picture of the actual book, but my students’ experience has shown that the right ISBN and the wrong cover image rarely leads to the right book. I found several copies from Avon Books on a couple used book sites. I knew I needed the 1985 Avon Books paperback edition, not the 1983 Timescape Books hardcover or the 2002 Gollancz reprint. (That World Fantasy Award, by the way? It was for The Dragon Waiting.) I have got to find this book, but it needs to have that cover.Īmazon is garbage for finding a particular edition. Vampires and the Wars of the Roses and Robert fricking Jordan loves the author? I am so in. They do not have any copies of The Dragon Waiting. So I swing by my local used bookshop on the way home. Vampires and the Wars of the Roses? You had better believe that I’m in.

I’ve been on a bit of a vampire kick lately-watching the Blade trilogy and finishing the last two seasons of True Blood. In a world ruled by sorcery, war, treachery, and passion, they have joined forced against the serpentine evil rising to vanquish a young Plantagenet prince-who now has been marked for a glorious new destiny as England’s King Richard III. In a snowbound inn high in the Alps, four people have met who will alter fate: a noble Byzantine mercenary a beautiful Florentine woman physician an ageless Welsh wizard and a German vampire. It all started when I read this Black Gate article. (Can’t-Wait Wednesday is hosted by Wishful Thinking.) So The Dragon Waiting isn’t a book yet to be released. Here I am, flouting social convention and breaking the rules once again.

The dragon waiting john ford