The Dragon Waiting

By John M. Ford

“The best mingling of history with historical magic that I have ever seen.”—Gene Wolfe

In a snowbound inn high in the Alps, four people meet who will alter fate.

A noble Byzantine mercenary . . .

A female Florentine physician . . .

An ageless Welsh wizard . . .

And Sforza, the uncanny duke.

Together they will wage an intrigue-filled campaign against the might of Byzantium to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester—and make him Richard III. Available for the first time in nearly two decades, with a new introduction by New York Times-bestselling author Scott Lynch, The Dragon Waiting is a masterpiece of blood and magic.

“Had [John M. Ford] taken The Dragon Waiting and written a sequence of five books based in that world, with that power, he would’ve been George R.R. Martin.” —Neil Gaiman

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250269027

John M. Ford

John M. Ford was, in his lifetime, a favorite author of many writers better known than he was, including Neil Gaiman and Robert Jordan. He won World Fantasy Awards for both his novel The Dragon Waiting and his poem "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station," and he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel, Growing Up Weightless. His Star Trek™ novel, The Final Reflection, essentially created the nuanced Klingon culture seen later in the feature films, and his other novel in that universe, How Much For The Planet?, was a Star Trek™ tale told as a Gilbert & Sullivan musical, complete with songs. He was a genius. He died in 2006.

Book preview

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Reviews for The Dragon Waiting

[jordan7hm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’ve been picking up books in the Tor essentials imprint lately and just finished The Dragon Waiting by John Ford. A bit clunky at times but it was a real enjoyable alt history / fantasy read. Ford asks a lot of his readers, and it feels like this is one that would really hold up well to a reread.It also feels like the kind of thing that in a lesser, or at least different, author would turn into a series.

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an alternate 15th century Europe, brought to us by the brilliant John M. Ford. Instead of Julian the Apostate, who only briefly interrupted the spread of Christianity in Europe, in this alternate history there was Julian the Wise, who lived long enough to prevent any faith from being banned, and any faith from becoming dominant over the others and being able to ban them. The eastern empire, its capital at Byzantium, remains strong and vibrant--and in the 15th century, is working to expand into western Europe. It controls about half of France, and parts of Italy, and wants more.In other ways, this Europe is very familiar. Edward IV is King of England, Lorenzo de' Medici is a powerful banker and de facto ruler of Florence. Galeazzo Sforza is Duke of Milan, though in this world he's in the pay of Byzantium, and also a vampire.We follow a wizard, Hywel Peredur, nephew of Owain Glyn Dwr; a mercenary named Dimitrios Ducas; a young woman doctor from Florence, Cynthia Ricci; and Gregory von Bayern, natural scientist, engineer, and vampire. Vampirism is a disease, and it can be spread, and that turns out to matter, quite a lot.The story revolves around people with very different original goals, coming together to achieve something perhaps none of them had originally intended. We travel through the beliefs and the ritual and cultural practices that didn't get suppressed by the rise of Christianity, but Christianity is also here, in several different flavors.This is a rich, lived-in world, and has special riches to offer to those interested in Renaissance Italy, the Wars of the Roses in England, and other absorbing bits of 15th century Europe.And it's really difficult to say more than that, because this is such a rich, layered world and story.Highly recommended.I bought this book.

[paulgtr234 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting read. John M. Ford reminds me somewhat of Neal Stephenson but maybe a little less didactic. For a complex alt history tale this felt like a well-paced read. As others who have reviewed this book, there were parts of the novel that wandered a bit - but it is well worth the journey.
I find it interesting that this book was written well before some current trends - strong female leads, LGBTQ characters both appear to be well represented in the Dr. Ricci and Dimi characters. This book can be said to have been well ahead of its time- perhaps even timeless in the classic sense.
This book is going onto my re-read shelf.

[zeborah · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read on the basis of its fame; would probably need to read a second time to fully follow what was happening. Certainly highly accomplished in its scope and level of detail all at once.

[jennieg_14 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I think I was oversold on this book. I found it a confusing mishmash of fantasy and historical fiction. The scene changes abruptly and without explanation, the characters are dull. The writing isn't bad and I've awarded extra points for a novel explanation of the murders of the Princes in the Tower.

[mhatchett_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a Magical Book!

[robertday_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite the title (there is no "real" dragon in the book), this reads more like an alternate history first and a fantasy second. The premise is that Byzantium endured and neither Christianity nor Islam became a dominant religion (which also means that various pagan beliefs from across Europe also persisted). Furthermore, magic works (within certain limits - in particular, wizards can't practice magic without it taking an immediate toll on their strength and health) and there are vampires, albeit with a rationale for the characteristics of that condition.The story is set in the late Medieval period, during the Wars of the Roses. A Welsh magician, a disinherited Byzantine scion turned soldier of fortune, a female Medici with medical skills and a Bavarian vampire ordnance engineer are brought together to play a part in ultimately putting Richard III on the throne of England and thwarting the advance of Byzantium. The world-building is exceptionally well-detailed and the scene painting is particularly vivid.The action of the book is a little episodic, and the continual shifts in point of view characters does mean that not all the events of the book happen on-stage. Add to that the fact that, especially in the last third of the book when the action moves to the British Isles, characters may be identified by their proper names or by their titles, (plus disguises, costumed and/or magical) and the whole thing does get a little hard to follow without a family tree or two to hand. So just like real Plantagenet history, then.The four main protagonists are well-drawn, though having all four active in the plot at the same time does perhaps leave that characterisation a bit thin in a 350-page novel rather than a 800-page doorstop blockbuster. Still, less is more. And Ford's research is good, with very few lapses caused by a transatlantic perspective - about the only example I tripped over were the murderers of the Duke of Clarence (of 'butt of malmsey' fame), whose accents mainly seem inspired by Lady Penelope's butler Parker in the 1960s 'Thunderbirds' tv series. The text is allusion-rich, some of these being buried quite deep. There was one Tolkein allusion that made me laugh out loud.Overall, then, a fantasy novel that reads like an alternate history, is well-written, more historically accurate than most, and above all intelligent whilst still retaining all the suspense and excitement of big bangs and derring-do. A palpable hit.

[salimbol · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Once I get past the book's central and somewhat nonsensical concept (that late medieval/early Renaissance Europe would have been essentially the same had Christianity not become the dominant religion a thousand years earlier), there's plenty of fascinating world-building on display, with clever fantasy elements and more than a touch of poetry. The author relies on many subtle, side-long glances at things, which is intriguing (and makes you feel clever when you get it ;-). However, the plot is very piecemeal and disparate, and it's a frustratingly elusive read as a whole, with a too-abrupt ending. As I suspect I've missed quite a lot of subtext on my first read, this is definitely a book that will warrant a revisit and re-evaluation!

[bunwat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was an engrossing story and I liked it. Vampires, wizards, Plantagenets, what's not to like? Ford knows a lot about the history of the late middle ages, and it shows - this alternate history is well grounded in real history. However the novel has an oblique style that I found a bit frustrating. Major parts of the story seem to take place essentially off stage.

He would lead you right up to some happening; a knife is approaching the character and then, pphhmmmff, you are somewhere else with some other character who is having lunch. A couple chapters later the character who was being approached with a knife shows up with a bandage on. Nobody really discusses what happened. A character is fleeing through the forest, a shot rings out, zip, you're at the lake with a different character. Later the forest guy shows up with a limp. A character has a secret. Three chapters later everyone knows the secret. How? I dunno.

A couple times I actually checked the pagination to see if maybe there were some pages missing or I'd had some sort of memory lapse. So I found that odd and a little irritating. Kind of like when you were a kid and the grown ups wouldn't tell you what was going on so you had to guess based on observation.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

"The Dragon Waiting" is set in a late mediaeval Europe which is mostly ruled by the Byzantine Empire, and in which Christianity and Islam never became the dominant religions that they were in our world at that time. I had to look up the dates of various historical characters in Wikipedia in order to guesstimate when the events of this novel were taking place, since there were a multitude of different dating systems in use. The Byzantines impose their laws on the lands they conquer but not their language (Greek) or religion (Mithraism), so that their subjects have less reason to rebel against them, but there are still regions of Italy and Eastern Europe holding out against the encroaching empire at the time this story is set. Three hundred years ago, England and the Byzantine empire partitioned France between them, leaving a small French-ruled buffer in between, but now the Byzantines are secretly supporting the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses and planning to take over England and the rest of France. The protagonists of this story each have their own reason to hate the Byzantines and set off to England in an attempt to foil their plots.I tend to mentally divide alternate history into science fiction (could have happened if things had turned out differently), and fantasy (stories including magic, fairies, dragons, psychic powers, etc.). I much prefer those that I classify as science fiction, so I was disappointed to realise that this book included magic and vampires, even though magic was hard to do and slow to achieve its aims and vampires were seen as people suffering from a disease rather than supernatural beings.I was also irritated by the characters, who seemed to react and over-react in the most unlikely ways, and although no-one expressed any surprise about Cynthia Ricci was a doctor, I found it it jarring that she was the only woman with an anachronistic (for our world) career, apart from a brief mention of a Valkyrie regiment of women soldiers at the end of the book.Also, from the time the protagonists got together I found it very hard to follow exactly what was going on, and more importantly why. The politics were impenetrable, as were the doings of the magicians, and the characters were always hinting things to each other and letting their sentences trail off, leaving me very confused. It would have been helpful to have had some idea why Cynthia and Peredur spent two years wandering around Wales and to have understood the point of the Robin Hood references, and I'm still unclear as to whether Peredur considered betraying Richard at the Battle of Bosworth.It's not that I expect everything to be laid on a plate for me, but this book was so much of a struggle that I could hardly be bothered to finish it. It won the World Fantasy Award and I was expecting to enjoy it, so it was a big disappointment.

[aarondesk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4 stars for setting, 3 stars for plot. What if magic and more existed during the time of Richard III? How would he come to power?The setting is exciting. John Ford keeps putting new twists on history and what could have happened. The overall plot however is a little bland and at the end I was left with a somewhat empty feeling.

[nessreader_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(wrong jacket above, but the paperback I got is very dull looking) Dull is the wrong thing for a book about a vampire infested alternate renaissance in which the byzantine empire never fell and Christianity never triumphed. With Christianity as one more sect among many, mages, vampires, Plantaganets and engineers intrigue and struggle.It took a while to bring the disparate gang of characters together and build the world, but was worth the time and attention. The ending is abrupt and (to me) felt a little unresolved.

[lindsay_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book's setting quite a lot. It is filled with interesting ideas and historical references. It is also written well, with one disconcerting time shift between sections that confused me momentarily. The character interaction was well done, and the settings were vividly portrayed.