What do You think about Tea With The Black Dragon (2001)?
This book exemplifies what I was hoping for when I got my kindle--that I'd be able to access out of print or obscure books from years ago that I loved. My success in finding such books has been spotty, but I am so happy I found this one.Tea with the Black Dragon is set in San Francisco in the early 80's, at the beginning of the computer revolution. Martha MacNamara, a 50-ish musician comes to San Francisco to visit her daughter, Liz, who has told her she needs to talk to her about something. At her hotel, she meets Mayland Long, an "slight Asian man of indeterminate age" as the book describes him. When Martha cannot find Liz, and it becomes increasingly obvious that Liz is in trouble, Mayland Long offers to help her.Even though computer technology has advanced several generations since this book was written, the plot still holds up. And Mayland Long is still one of the most fascinating characters I've encountered in print. His Chinese name is Oolong, which means both a kind of tea and black dragon. The black dragon, also called the imperial dragon, is less interested in pillage and acquiring gold than he is in acquiring knowledge. Mayland Long remains an ambiguous character through most of the book, and the fantasy elements of the story are handled with a very light touch. I can't say much more than that without giving away too much of the story. I am glad to have this loaded on to my kindle, so I can read it whenever I want to.
—Gwyneth Stewart
***Crossposted from 'Outside of Dogs' blog***When I happen across a book that mixes one of my favorite genres with Chinese history and culture I can’t help but read it. Problem is that, given that China is my professional field, I’m also nitpicky.There are many things I like in Tea with the Black Dragon but I would have liked it better if some little things had been different.I loved the fact that both main characters are middle-aged (it isn’t that common to have people over 50 as the main characters in fantasy), I also like the old-fashioned feeling I got from the style (the book was first published in 1983 but, had I not known, I would have said it was older). it is not that it feels outdated, far from it, but the vocabulary is richer that the usual fare of ‘modern’ fantasy novel (although not pretentious or purple), and the prose has a more leisurely pace, it isn’t slow but alternates action sequences with more meditative, quiet moments.I also like the zen snippets and the fact that the moment of revelation for Mr. Long felt like an echo from a famous quote by Gertrude Stein.What I don’t like too much is Mr. Long himself, the black dragon of the title. It feels to me like the author portrayed him like a transformed Chinese dragon but was hazy about what a Chinese dragon really is and how it differs from an European one.I cringed at Mayland Long’s disconfort on being on the water, for instance, and at the hints in the book about his links with fire since Chinese dragons are known for being water-spirits in control of the rain, rivers, lakes and even the sea itself.There are also scattered references to gold and hoarding, but Chinese dragons aren’t hoarders sitting on piles of gold, they are custodians of treasures and give them freely to deserving humans. Mayland Long tells of finding himself in human shape after a night-long vigil over the body of a dead hermit, fact is that in Chinese stories dragons have two shapes, they can appear either as dragons or as humans, at will, the nasty surprise for Mayland should have been finding himself trapped in human shape, not having one.I feel I can recommend this one only to readers that won’t be bothered by the sloppy research on what should have been one of the main elements of the book, for a way better MacAvoy (at least in this reviewer’s opinion) read the Damiano series instead.
—Marina Bonomi
I do like those novels which are hard to classify. Despite being on the genre award lists this is certainly not SF and it is perhaps only borderline Fantasy. It is however, a wonderfully written piece full of poetic imagery and metaphor.Martha is a middle-aged musician, a classically trained violinist who - for various reasons – now tours the country with a ceili band. She has come to San Francisco having received a worrying invitation from her daughter Liz who has booked her into an expensive hotel on the coast. At the bar, the barman introduces her to an intriguing oriental guest, Mayland Long, who invites her to take tea with him. There she explains that her daughter has gone missing, while being absently fascinated by Mayland’s extraordinarily long fingers.Mayland is much taken with Martha, since it seems that she embodies something he has been searching for.We soon learn that Mayland has not always been human and was once a Chinese Imperial Black dragon. Why and how Mayland became human is not important but is revealed later in the novel.Mayland offers to help Martha search for her daughter and thus begins a brief but marvellous adventure which combines Buddhist philosophy, tea, computer science, crooked businessman, hi tech fraud and love.MacAvoy has a very individual style and in this novel at least there is a keen sense of the visual. When Mayland discovers Martha’s daughter we are treated to his view of her taste in décor and furnishings which seems to change from room to room.‘Liz Macnamara’s home was sharp angled, glacial pale. The walls were neither ecru, dove nor cream but a white so pure as to shimmer with blue. On the bare, bleached oak floor were scattered cobalt Rya rugs, like holes in smooth ice, On a table in the dining ell rested a tray of Swedish glass, glinting smooth and colorless.’ (Chapter 6)I have often criticised short novels for containing more characters than the word count can comfortably support. This however is a masterclass in how to deploy characters. There are probably no more than eight characters in the entire book and every one (even those that appear briefly) are deftly painted. It’s an unusual novel which no doubt contains additional symbolism that one may not pick up on a first reading. Highly recommended.
—Roddy Williams
