Here, There be Dragons

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Three young men are entrusted with the Imaginarium Geographica, an atlas of fantastical places to which they travel in hopes of defeating the Winter King whose bid for power is related to the First World War raging in the Real World.

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a book that I cant put down submitted by honordenver on June 26, 2011, 4:01pm Here ,there be dragons is a great first book in the Imaginarium Geographica Series. the book starts off with a mysterious murder that brings together three scholars. what they don't know are they are the caretakers of the imaginarium Geographica, which is a book that contains a map of all the fabled lands. John,Jack,and Charles have barely gotten to know each other before they are whisked away on an adventure to save the Archipelago and defeat the winter king and restore a king to his thrown. This was a great book, maybe even one of the best I've ever read.

Unbelievable submitted by Elizabeth Merritt on December 9, 2012, 10:43am This book truly sets a high bar for the subsequent books to follow. As it turns out, a lot of the "fiction" books in our world are actually true. All the lands we've read about exist as islands in the Archipelago of Dreams, and there is only one book of maps, the Imaginarium Geographica, which shows all the lands in it.

Unfortunately, to understand all of this book you have to have read through a good deal of books to understand this, including some works by Homer, Egyptian Mythology, and several books by Lloyd Alexander. There are far more, but unfortunately I don't have it in front of me right now so I can't list them here.

Test yourself for Owen compatibility submitted by Jan Wolter on August 4, 2013, 5:24pm I give you two tiny excerpts from "Here, There Be Dragons". First, the introduction of a creature: "It was a badger. In a vest and a waistcoat, walking upright, with a pince-nez in one eye and spats on both furred feet." And the description of a ship: "At the fore of the ship was the masthead, a great head and torso of a dragon."

If those sentences seem fine to you, then you might manage to enjoy this book. But if they make you wonder how the heck you can wear a pince-nez in one eye, or what in blazes a masthead is doing on the front of a ship, then you are probably overly sensitive to little details, and will be spending half the book wondering why all the characters behave so ridiculously. There are a few fine inventive bits in here, and some flashes of humor. I quoted some bad word usage, I'll quote a good one too: "'Did he now?' said Charles as a smile began to cheshire over his face." I like this verbization of "cheshire". So if you don't care about the difference between a monocle and a pince-nez, or a masthead and a figurehead, and like to see characters having some adventures, even if the reasons for the adventures don't hold up to a second's inspection, you may enjoy this book.

Also, adventure fans will have to wade through a lot of talk to get their fix. Why the talk goes on for several chapters after all the bad guys are dead, working its way up to a surprise revelation already spoiled for you by the marketing of the book, and then onward through an enitirely pointless epilogue. It's also a gold mine of literary allusions, albeit not in a very literate setting. If you miss them all, the author will explain some to you in the afterword.

Dragon fans needn't bother. There do be dragons here, but not in very big roles or particularly imaginatively depicted. You'll find much better dragons on other books, such as, say, "The Hobbit" or "Voyage of the Dawn Treader."