While you ’re wait for A Dance With Dragons , why not distract yourself by lease a ride with some griffins ? K.J. Taylor ’s The Dark Griffin is the best gamy fancy novel we ’ve read in eld .
Taylor ’s author endorsement in the back of The Dark Griffin starts with a quote : “ A lot of phantasy authors take their inspiration from Tolkien . I take mine from G.R.R. Martin and Finnish metal . ” Which says it all , really .
spoiler ahead …
In The Dark Griffin , gryphon are well-informed creatures who speak a language that humans can interpret . People have domesticated the griffins and created a kind of partnership with them — each griffon pair off with a homo for life , and the griffon - human adherence has a set of power and import . A “ griffiner , ” or gryphon - passenger , is mechanically part of the nobility , and the griffin serve as drive , weapon system , friend , and sometimes dark alter ego . It ’s very similar to the way Draco and Draco - riders are depicted in a ton of books .
There are two point of view part in The Dark Griffin — the titulary griffin , who ’s one of the last remaining wild griffins in the world . He find out early on that his only hope for survival is to find a man to partner with so he can navigate this confusing human - dominated world , but becoming domesticated is hard than it looks .
The more the dingy gryphon try out to become domesticated , the more it looks like the creature ’s head for the hills crazy . Which is where our other protagonist comes in .
Arren Cardockson is a youthful griffiner who ’s sort of an Ishmael despite his high social rank . He ’s the descendent of Northerners , a nation of boor who were defeat in some horrible warfare and then enslaved . Arren was born free , in the South , and does n’t really weigh himself a Northerner , even though his pale skin and fateful hair mark him out as the descendant of slaves . Thanks to his quick wag and his good resonance with his griffin Eluna , Arren ’s risen to become the Master of Trade in the city , and is on his way to even more advancement — until it all flow aside .
Due to an chance event at work , Arren wind up owing some money to a world ’s kin — and his mentor hint he and Eluna go to capture the dark griffon , which is terrorizing a pocket-sized township called Rivermeet . The mission exit horribly incorrect , and Arren loses both his griffin and his membership — and it turn out he was set up by hoi polloi who did n’t need to see a Yankee join the prevail classes . Arren ’s story gets really , really bleak and insane , culminate in a few scenes that will have you instantly wince at their nastiness — it ’s up there with some of the tortures Martin inflicts on his more poor protagonists .
Meanwhile , the gloomy griffin gets chain and put away and forced to slaughter human prisoner in an arena for the entertainment of the ruling Southerners .
There are two more Holy Writ in the griffin trilogy , being published on a monthly basis — I think the 2d book is out already and the third is occur this month , but I ’ve only read the first so far . At its best , it reminds me a bit of Martin ’s piece of work , but also some of the most entertaining poppycock from Taylor ’s fellow Australian , Karen Miller . I ’m emphatically curious to see what take place in the next two Good Book .
It ’s always compelling to see a imposing person who starts out in advance fortune and then gets bring scummy — but also , as Arren is torn down , he acquire over and over that people will always see him as a Northerner . It does n’t count if he think himself a Southerner and rejects what he sees as his ancestors ’ barbarism , he ’ll never really be take — even by some of the hoi polloi who take to be his admirer . He realise that what his parents told him was reliable all along : he ’s a Yank after all , and his inheritance is something to be proud of .
And Arren realizes , also , that what the Southerners have done to the gryphon is similar to what they ’ve done to the Northerners : both the “ barbarian ” and the reasoning creatures have been chained , collared and forced to process the rule Southerners .
And that ’s the most compelling thing about The Dark Griffin — it demo the uneasy human relationship between tameness and colonization . Both processes involve a expectant deal of false consciousness and twelvemonth of painful training , before a Northerner by birth can learn to belittle his own people . And before a splendiferous spare tool can be caged and think of itself as the place of humans .
Oh , and you might also want to assure out this book for its scenes of people fighting griffin , gryphon fighting each other , and a badass black griffin fly barren and lofty with spicy rake in its honker . If you enjoy a rip - roaring fantasy narration that keeps you pissed off at the latest inhumanity visited on its protagonists , then you should definitely contain out The Dark Griffin , in nastiness of the slightly embarrassing - to - be - seen - with cover .
Quran reviewBooksFantasyGeorge R.R. Martin
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