Dragons and Dwarves: Novels of the Cleveland Portal

This is an omnibus version that includes the two novels The Dragons of the Cuyahuga and The Dwarves of Whiskey Island. I'm currently reading The Dwarves of Whiskey Island and will update this with that review once that book is finished. But here's the review of The Dragons of the Cuyahoga: The Dragons of the Cuyahoga is the first book by S. Andrew Swann featuring newspaper reporter Kline Maxwell, who usually covers the political beat in Cleveland, OH, never the "fuzzy gnome" stories. What are the "fuzzy gnome" stories? Well, the main premise behind this book and the sequel is that a Portal has opened up in Cleveland and elves, dragons, mages, gnomes, and every other assorted fantasyland creature have tumbled through an inhabited the area around Cleveland. They're limited in how far they can roam by the magical field that surrounds the Portal, but it's still a significant amount of area. I picked the book up because of the premise, but I went into the book with some doubts. It's very difficult to integrate magic into the real world believable, but I think S. Andrew Swann has done it. There are limits on the magic and the way it is described and how it is used is interesting. There has been a lot of thought put into how something like the Portal would fit into our world, not just the mechanics of it and how it works, but also how it would affect politics and government and such. The book has two great strengths, and that's one of them. The second is that the elves and dragons and such aren't just humans with funny ears or wings. S. Andrew Swann had gone the extra mile and made them all THINK differently. The story begins when Kline is assigned to the "fuzzy gnome" story of a dragon that crash lands in the Cuyahoga. Except after a while it becomes obvious that it wasn't an accident, but murder. Most of the outcome of the story revolves around the fact that the fantasyland creatures think differently and that Kline has to adjust his own thinking in order to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together so that they make sense. He keeps assigning human motivations and motivators to the elves and dragons and such, and he has to kick that habit in order to get the mystery of the dragon's death solved. This idea--that the fantasy creatures don't think the same as we do--is something that should be integrated into fantasy novels more, but it's hard to pull off, mostly because it's hard for us (the human author and human reader) to wrap our head around how someone so completely different will think so completely different. In the end, though, you can follow how S. Andrew Swann's creatures think and who killed the dragon and why--and why those who help Kline, help him, and those who don't, don't. There are some drawbacks to the novel. I'm not sure what happened, but this book appears to have skipped the last page proof phase. There are alot of typos and sentences gone wrong and such. I don't usually mind some throughout my books, becau

I ordered this book as a bit of a crap-shoot, fully prepared to be disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised. Billed as a supernatural mystery it does fairly well in living up to that billing. Granted, it's in no way a truly complex mystery and there is a little bit of plot wandering, but all in all it's a decent attempt at intertwining the urban fantasy and mystery genres. Hard core mystery readers may be a bit put out by the lack of complex plot twists however; to wit, there's a lot that's mysterious but not a lot that's actually a logically solvable mystery. There's enough magic interwoven into the two books that urban fantasy fans will probably be satisfied. My omission of the 5th star was due to the fact that the books, while technically adept, are at times somewhat less than engaging. They're not BORING -- just, not spectacular all the time. That being said it's still quite worth the money, especially considering you do get both Dragons of the Cuyahoga and The Dwarves of Whiskey Island included herein. I myself found the first volume far more appealing, but both are worth your time.