Steal the Book Title

[tuftears]

Maybe I've posted about this before... But Steal the Dragon is too good a title for the book it's on.

Seriously, what's up with that?

A. Nothing gets stolen in the book description.
B. No dragon is involved.

Every time I see this book title, I imagine the book it should have been.

Point the first. Something has to get stolen... I don't mean breaking in to free captive or enslaved dragons. That's 'Free the Dragon', still a good idea but very different. I mean that it should fit the 'caper' model: a thief or other scruffian is presented with a problem, we as the readers are informed of the various difficulties, the thief assembles his or her resources, and proceeds with the heist. Nothing ever goes entirely as planned of course...

Point the second. There has to be a dragon. Don't just nickname an aircraft or spaceship 'Dragon'. It doesn't have to be an intelligent dragon; in fact making it intelligent raises completely legitimate questions of ethics and morality, legal status of monsters notwithstanding. It does have to be big, winged, scaled, and possessed of enormous destructive force and a temperament to suit. In other words, not the most cooperative thing in the world to steal.

I can even imagine the opening line of the book.

"I don't do livestock," the greatest thief in the world said. She ignored the aide's nervous tittering. "Artwork, bullion, documents, artifacts historical, magical, and religious, if it's portable and worth something to someone, I'll steal it. But I don't do people and I don't do beasts."

Comments

[kelkyag]

Hmm. The dragon sculpture being stolen is a golem that guards [other treasure] (and is only part of the defenses). The person hiring the thief who (attempts to) steal it doesn't want it, they just want it out of the way so they have a better shot at the rests of the treasure; bonus points that this makes the hired thief a more obvious target to the owner of [other treasure].

Still not there. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one has to figure why hired thief doesn't go on to steal the rest. ;)

[kelkyag]

Hands already full with the dragon? Other defenses? Dunno! This is part of why I am not an author. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's definitely not an easy problem. That's part of why it's so interesting, if it were obvious, there'd be no story. "Steal the Treasure" -- that's not a book title, that's a thief's motivational poster. ;)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Actually it came to me... The treasure may not be what the thief would recognize as treasure. Several scenarios:

The dragon statue is the key to an actual live dragon. Who controls the statue can waken the actual living dragon from its rock-like slumber, where it's pretending to be part of a mountain range. No one tells the thief this, of course, so it comes as a complete surprise when massive earthquakes interfere with her getaway plans.

The dragon statue is in a museum. The other artifacts around are just ancient historical things, of no monetary value to the thief without a collector who's actively interested in them. (have you ever tried to fence a 10,000 year old stele?) The dragon itself however is of great interest to the collector.

The dragon is the guardian to a city. Legends say it will come to life when the city is threatened. With it out of the way...

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

The "treasure not recognized as treasure" bit has been done a few times, in various ways =^.^=.

The one that comes most immediately to mind was from "The Wizardry Compiled" (second in the "programmer from silicon valley winds up in a magical world" series). An apprentice with a grudge against "Wiz" (the programmer) ends up dismissed, and decides to raid Wiz's notes to turn them over to the bad guys on his way out.

He takes formulae for several important spells, but dismisses the most important document as "the same tripe he foists off on his students".

This was a tome nicknamed "The Dragon Book", detailing the underpinnings of his personal magic system. =^.^=

[kelkyag]

rix_scaedu seems to be way ahead of us on this one, and square on your #2 scenario. Yay sic'ing the problem on an actual writer!

I really like the sculpture as a critical component in waking/contacting/something a very large dragon, though, too, possibly in combination with the [area] guardian option. Then perhaps it's not in a museum, it's in a military installation ...