The Dragon on the Border
core novel 1992 The Dragon Knight
Record
| First published | 1992 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.83 (1,248 ratings, collected 2026-09-05) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780441342334 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
Jim, now settled as a feudal lord and apprentice magician in an alternate medieval England, travels with his companions Sir Brian and the archer Dafydd to the English-Scottish border to deliver news of a fallen knight's death to the man's family. There the party encounters the supernatural Hollow Men and uncovers a French-backed Scottish invasion plot threatening the fragile peace of the borderlands. With his magical energy limited and needing careful rationing, Jim must rely on wit and swordplay as much as sorcery, especially after Brian suffers a serious wound that forces Jim to treat the injury with the crude medicine of the era, one of his greatest personal fears in this world. To stop the Hollow Men and the invasion both, Jim must unite historically hostile factions, the Little Men and the human Borderers, against a common enemy.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Dragon Knight
- Series: The Dragon Knight core; position 3 of 9 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Gordon R. Dickson
Notes
- From the series record (The Dragon Knight): Nine-novel portal-fantasy series (1976-2000) about Jim Eckert, a modern graduate student pulled into a parallel fantasy world and transformed into a dragon, who must navigate a mixed cast of dragons, knights and magical creatures to rescue his fiancee. Opened with a British Fantasy Award-winning novel expanded from a 1957 short story; completed with the ninth volume in 2000, before Dickson's death in 2001, no further installments planned or announced.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Dragon Knight: position 3 of 9: previous The Dragon Knight (1990) · next The Dragon at War (1992)
Sources
- Dragon Knight (novel series) - Wikipedia
- Gordon R. Dickson - Order of Books
- https://sfbook.com/the-dragon-on-the-border.htm
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