The Dragon in Lyonesse

Mathemetician Jim Eckert, who has come to live in magical medieval times and can become a dragon at will, returns in a new adventure that makes him the unlikely ally of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. 15,000 first printing.

Dickson's Arthurian series about a dragon knight--twentieth-century mathematician Jim Eckert, who has been thrown back to the fourteenth century and has acquired the ability to turn into a dragon at will--continues. This time Eckert discovers that Lyonesse, the refuge of King Arthur and his knights, is being menaced by a dark power. Arthur and the knights are reluctant to accept the aid of a dragon with magical powers and even more reluctant to draw on twentieth-century knowledge for help. Eckert has to be diplomat, warrior, and puzzle solver all at once, then, and quickly. Dickson's is a distinctly original take on the Matter of Britain (which, to be sure, is supposed to have transpired a good many centuries earlier than in these yarns), distinguished by the humor arising out of the contrast between popular notions about the Middle Ages and its frequently grisly realities. The latest installment is one of the series' best, although readers who know what has gone before will enjoy it most. Roland Green