In the 41st century, mankind is living an idyllic life of luxury and ease, its every need provided for through technology that is, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. Food, clothing, housing, all the necessities of life are materialized as needed; people can change their bodies to whatever shape they desire at a whim, or can even transfer their minds into nanotechnological constructs. There have not even been any natural human body births (as opposed to uterine replicators) for over a thousand years. All that is required is energy, which is available in such abundance that a project is underway to use a "planet/moon glance strike [to] start Wolf 359's second planet on its way to being a tectonically active body" for future human colonization. Everything is controlled by a massive, uncaring AI called Mother, who is directed by the ten members of a ruling Council who hold the Keys that control its power.
But there is trouble in paradise. The Council members have split into two factions, and soon treachery provokes out-and-out war. All the boundless power that had been enabling that life of ease is tied up in attack and counter-attack—and without power, most of mankind is dumped almost all the way back to the stone age. Now the hope for humanity's survival lies with the handful of people for whom medieval- and industrial-era reenactment was more than just a mindless hobby—it is they who will have to teach the survivors to farm, to keep themselves alive—and to fight, to keep themselves free.
I have always been partial to "strandee" stories, like Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson—or, more recently, Manhattan Transfer and 1632. There Will Be Dragons is a different kind of strandee story—instead of being stranded in some far-away place or time, the book's characters (and all the rest of humanity) are stranded in their own world. It is a sort of "Gamma Elseworld"—instead of overproliferating supertechnology leading to a catastrophic meltdown, the supertechnology just quietly goes away
One of the interesting things about this setting is how the Fall of technology leaves them both better and worse off than in the 20th century: better because of all the genetically-engineered crops and creatures (such as cosilk—cotton fabric with properties of silk—or sheep who drop their woolen coats all at once at the right time of the year) that make it easier to farm and produce than ever it was in the dark ages, but worse because Mother has been set to damp out all artificial explosions—including gunpowder and internal combustion. Farming must be done by hand and plow, and armed forces are reduced to using man-powered weapons—which is what makes that Einstein quote so true.
But by far the most interesting thing about the setting is how literally it takes the Arthur C. Clarke quote I cited above. I have read other books (such as Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders series) that clothed science fiction in the trappings of fantasy, but this is the first book I've ever read where hard science fiction was used expressly to create the trappings of fantasy, right down to Elves, Orcs, unicorns, and dragons. For the purposes of the story, the technology might as well be magic; the Councillors might as well be duelling wizards instead of duelling technologists. The blending is so complete, it should almost be called "science fictasy."
This level of technology and its consequences raise an interesting question, which is pondered by various characters at one time or another—having lived through the loss of their magical supertech and learned to rely on themselves, how will they find their lives changed when the technology returns, when they're able to do almost anything at the wave of a hand again? This is a question that will probably be developed further during the rest of the series, and perhaps not answered until the end, if even then. In fact, I would say that this question is one of the story's central themes.
But enough about weighty themes and sociological considerations—by this point, you may well be wondering if this is a novel or a textbook. Be assured, it is a novel, whose cast of many different characters allows romance, military, coming-of-age, and other stories to share space within the book's pages. It is very fun and exciting to read, and John Ringo is clearly having just as much fun putting it all together (including throwing in a couple of cute cameos that Internet-savvy fans may recognize).
I found There Will Be Dragons enjoyable enough that I would recommend it most highly. All the same, there are a few niggling little things that bother me. For one thing, the title, There Will Be Dragons, is slightly misleading: sure, there may well be dragons, but they're not seen very much at all over the course of the story. He might as well have called it There Will Be Elves or There Will Be Unicorns, as both of those seem to play a larger role than dragons do.
For another thing, there are a few minor glitches of grammar or spelling that should have been caught in editing: the use of "here, here" as an expression of agreement when it should properly be "hear, hear"; the spelling of the term for nanomachines as "nannites" (which puts me in mind of a horde of microminiaturized Fran Dreschers) when everywhere else I've seen it spelled as "nanites." Also, at least in the HTML edition on the CDROM, there are many places where there should be text separators (to make clear an otherwise confusing transition between places or times) but they simply aren't there.
Finally, there are a few places where Ringo repeats himself: for example, a certain Biblical metaphor appears at least three different times in the book (and is treated each time as if it had not been mentioned before). Now, there's nothing wrong with an author reiterating points that are important to the plot—it's just that to me it felt like perhaps, as long as the book was, Ringo might have forgotten he'd already used a particular thing elsewhere and so used it again.
Anyway, as complaints go, those are all quite minor, and barely mar my appreciation for the book. I will be awaiting with bated breath the next volumes in the series.
But odd as it may sound, the novel is not the only reason to get the book. Like some other Baen novels, the first hardcover printing of There Will Be Dragons was bundled with a free CDROM that contains twenty-five complete novels or anthologies in ebook form (slanted mainly toward John Ringo solo or collaborative works, but with various books by other authors included as well), in multiple formats (including plain HTML and RTF), with no DRM. The disc also includes various bonus goodies such as a cover art gallery, a Sluggy Freelance summary and sample strip collection, a screensaver, and a There Will Be Dragons mp3 audiobook (plus a couple of audio short stories, and an mp3 of a Heather Alexander song that features prominently in the novel). It does not include the D20 RPG that was on the CD bound into Ringo's prior work, Hell's Faire.
The There Will Be Dragons audiobook is a decent spoken-word recording version of the book, though the reader mispronounces an occasional word and reads a bit flatly for my taste. Add to this the fact that the compiler of the CD ran the recording through a filter that shortened the empty space between words (cutting about two hours of "blank space" from the recording), and you're left with a distinctly unnatural-sounding performance. In fact, for quite some time I was positive I was listening to an advanced computer speech synthesizer rather than a live actor. Next time, I hope they use variable bit-rate encoding to keep the size down, instead of affecting the actor's cadence.
As with the other four Baen bound-in CDs, permission is explicitly granted to copy and share but not sell the CD and its contents. At the time of the writing of this review, all five of the Baen CDROM images are available for free BitTorrent download as ISO files on this website. (Remember that it is good BitTorrent etiquette to leave your client open until you have uploaded at least as much of the file as you downloaded.)
There Will Be Dragons ends up being a fun adventure story, and one I recommend almost without reservation. (There are some mild discussions of adult issues that may offend some people.) Whether you buy the book, check it out from a library, or download the CDROM, you're sure to enjoy it. I can hardly wait until There Will Be Sequels.
