Cecelia Holland is widely acknowledged as one of the finest historical novelists of our time. She is the author of more than thirty novels, including The Angel and the Sword and The Kings in Winter. Holland lives in Humboldt County, in Northern California, where she teaches creative writing.
Dragon Heart by Cecelia Holland
Cecelia Holland’s Dragon Heart had so much potential, with its gothic, Mervyn Peake-like setting and darkly surreal family dynamics. Unfortunately, Dragon Heart never fulfilled its promise, marred especially by a frustrating lack of fluidity or cohesion.
The relatively slim novel (about 270 pages) is set mostly in Castle Ocean, home to the ruling family of a small coastal land threatened (and really mostly-conquered) by an aggressive large empire to the east. The former king was killed by the Empire, leaving his queen with little choice but to marry one of the Emperor’s brothers. In fact, she has already killed the first brother-fiancé, but now a second inhabits Castle Ocean, waiting only the return of Tirza — the queen’s daughter — lost at sea, befor... Read More
