On Votaries, I discuss how dragons tend to create "meta" fantasy--that is, dragons tend to create fiction that comments directly on fantasy tropes.
Eliot Grayson's Deven and the Dragon is a case in point. Deven and Fiora meet in the Rose Garden. Fiora--little though powerful; beautiful but not in any typical way--is horribly self-conscious. So he wears a cloak and insists on trying to appear in faintly mysterious circumstances.
Big, handsome, faintly teasing and take-life-as-it-is Deven is confused. It's hot out: why wear a cloak? And what does it mean when someone claims his name means "born of darkness"? Whose parent would ever name their child that? And what's up with the claim that they are meeting in darkness anyway? It isn't so very dark. And not all that quiet either since the kitchen side-door was left open and the cook is yelling at people.
It's a hilarious encounter, which is made more hilarious by how effortlessly Grayson pokes holes in particular tropes by calling upon a familiarity with those tropes. As Fiora, the dragon, thinks to himself, "[Dragons] brooded in solitary and majestic dignity--and yes, occasionally while complaining to their stewards while hiding in a closet...[b]ut mostly when sitting atop a turret under a cloud-obscured moon, contemplating the futility and sorrow of life."
It reminded me of several scenes--from Angel, Psych, and Castle--where too cool-to-be-believed men try to slide effortlessly over the hood of a car--you know, like those guys from The Dukes of Hazard--only to find that it is actually WAY too much work.
And it reminded me of Tanith Lee's marvelous Dragon Hoard, which pokes fun at recognized tropes--while also appreciating them.
To put this another way: Dragons never get dull.
