The Clockwork Dragon

by Pauline Creeden, J L Mbewe, and Lynn Donovan

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into with The Clockwork Dragon when I purchased it back in 2014. It was free. The word dragon and clockwork were in the title so I probably thought that it was a young adult steampunk adventure. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Clockwork Dragon is a collection of short stories by three authors that involved one recurring object -- one heavy gold dragon statue with a winding key stuck in its belly. At the start I was intrigued by the stories. They were mysterious and occurred in different parts of the world. And then the stories shifted to more fantastical elements with strong religious overtones this left me confused, as it was a drastic change from the first couple of stories in the collection.

I was hoping by the end of the book I would have a clear explanation as to what the clockwork dragon actually was, how it worked and what its motivations were. Sadly, this never came to fruition and I was left with this weird, disjointed collection of stories that left me feeling befuddled and perplexed.