Orson Scott Card Loves Maxey's Dragon Age

Orson Scott Card, legendary genre writer, has read James Maxey's Dragonforge. And then he loved it so much, he went back to read Bitterwood.

And oh my, he loved the books:

James Maxey once took a writing class from me.

I wish I could claim that everything he knows about writing, I taught him, but alas, he arrived in my class with a full set of talent. Maybe something he learned in my Literary Boot Camp helped speed him along, but the fact is, he would have done fine without ever taking a class at all.

Which really irritates me.

I really only meant to sample a bit of his novel Dragonforge. Life is short. There have been enough dragon books in the world, haven't there?

But something happened. Even though Dragonforge was a sequel, whose original I had not read, I got hooked. I was being taken into a world that I'd never seen before. Maxey had actually invented a fascinating society – several societies, in fact. And his characters were real and I began to care about them.

I kept waiting for Dragonforge to leave me confused because I hadn't read the previous book – but it never happened. Maxey skillfully gave me every scrap of information I needed to understand the present action.

I kept reading far into the night. Until I had read it all – as dawn was already brightening the windows of my bedroom.

I got up, ordered the first book, Bitterwood, from Amazon, and then, finally, went to sleep.

Since I'd read Dragonforge, I figured that I'd just skim Bitterwood – after all, I knew how it came out, didn't I?

Instead, I ended up reading every word of the first book, too. Because it was so thick and rich in story that I didn't want to miss anything. Dragonforge might have told me the major plot points, but only Bitterwood itself could deliver the experience...

There is certainly room for more books in the series – but each volume so far gives a satisfying closure. There's no need to wait for the series to be complete.

You still have time to read these books before the summer ends. So why are you still reading this column?