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DRAGON POND by A.R. Lloyd

DRAGON POND

Vol. III of the Kine Saga

by A.R. Lloyd

Pub Date: Aug. 15th, 1991
ISBN: 0-09-173980-2
Publisher: Muller/Trafalgar

Volume three of the Kine saga. Kine is a weasel, the four- footed sort, but he speaks in perfect (if rather boastful) English, better than that of the surrounding humans in the beautiful English countryside. Here is the heroic tale of Kine's last battle, this time against a giant polecat. Get a load of what Kine and his ``goblin'' crowd are up against: ``The berserker was monstrous, a specter of violence...Behind a huge skull blazed hate.'' The destroyer—with his sidekicks, a nasty small owl and an even nastier feral ferret- -plans a wholesale wipe-out of the neighborhood. Frogs of the pond, an old farmer's hens and goose, all are merely warm-ups. The valiant warrior Kine—with a new mate and litter—gathers help from weasel battle comrades old and new, two brave thrushes, a naysaying, crabby old rook, and Scrat, the wee, doomsaying shrew. Brilliant strategy wins the day—and glorious action. Anglophilic adults will appreciate Lloyd's mesmerizing tribute to the beauties and hidden ways of the flora and fauna of woods, streams, ponds, and fields, and will tolerate the garrulous animals, whose dialogue is roughly WW II B-movie mode. And then, too, there's quite a bit of bustle about it all, punctuated by a tiny shrew racing about crying, ``Woe!'' and ``Doom!'' (Animal lovers, for whom this is a heady offering, will be glad to know there's no maiming of the shrew.)