The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

380 Pages
Paperback
Fantasy Fiction
1987

Yes, Yes, Yes another Stephen King, what can I say I got sucked back in. My wife and I each had a copy of the book so we decided to have a little 2 person book club. We had both read the book before, but it had been a long time.

King makes a detour on this away from his normal styled book and puts us in a fantasy setting. Now many King books deal with fantastic and supernatural subjects, but this is set in a more typical fantasy setting with Kings, Knights, a Kingdom and Peril, Dragons and, of course, an evil Wizard. This book follows a royal family, a King and his two sons. The Wizard Flagg quickly shows he is not to be trusted, but the family doesn't realize that.

I always give King credit for his ability to come up with the most fantastic of ideas and then make them into a story that you care about. This one seems almost like he took a bunch of regularly used fantasy tropes and tries to tell a story within those restrictions. We have a murdered King, A prisoner in a tower, an evil wizard trying to establish control. We have the unlikely hero go beyond what is possible to save the day. But somehow he makes it work with out becoming obvious.

3 Emotional/Intellectual - The Prince is the most likeable character, but for Stephen King fans we also get a good look at the beginnings of Randall Flagg.

3 Style/Readability - Though it seems to be done on purpose the overused tropes of the typical fantasy novel make this less than great. He does keep it interesting considering that.

2 Long Term Impact - I imagine Stephen King's books will be read for hundreds of years. I think this will probably be one of the lesser celebrated ones.

8 out of 13 - I have read it twice. I would say it has redeeming qualities, but over all you can find better King books and you can find better fantasy books.

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