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Black Dragon #1
Tea with the Black Dragon
Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter Elizabeth is in trouble, she just doesn't know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco's most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused and a little bit worried. Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is drawn to Martha's good nature and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter. Mayland and Martha become close in a short period of time and he promises to help her find Elizabeth, making small inroads in the mystery before Martha herself disappears. Now Mayland is struck by the realization, too late, that he is in love with Martha, and now he fears for her life. Determined to find her, he sets his prodigious philosopher's mind to work on the problem, embarking on a potentially dangerous adventure.
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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4165 people want to read
About the author
R.A. MacAvoy
18books195followersRoberta Ann (R. A.) MacAvoy is a fantasy and science fiction author in the United States. Several of her books draw on Celtic or Taoist themes. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1984. R. A. MacAvoy was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Francis and Helen MacAvoy. She attended Case Western Reserve University and received a B.A. in 1971. She worked from 1975 to 1978 as an assistant to the financial aid officer of Columbia College of Columbia University and from 1978 to 1982 as a computer programmer at SRI International before turning to full-time writing in 1982. She married Ronald Allen Cain in 1978.
R.A.MacAvoy was diagnosed with dystonia following the publication of her Lens series. She now has this disorder manageable and has returned to writing. (see )
R.A.MacAvoy was diagnosed with dystonia following the publication of her Lens series. She now has this disorder manageable and has returned to writing. (see )
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 433 reviews
December 29, 2015
This was a very, very poorly written book. By the Nines, the dialogue was so utterly forced.
Character descriptions were absurd.
>The dragon was an idiot.
>The heroine was an idiot.
>The daughter was an idiot.
>The love sick puppy was an idiot.
>The bad guys were idiots.
They shot a cat.
Oh, and because racism. WTF is the difference between an asian and a british smile exactly? Someone please explain.
Character descriptions were absurd.
>The dragon was an idiot.
>The heroine was an idiot.
>The daughter was an idiot.
>The love sick puppy was an idiot.
>The bad guys were idiots.
They shot a cat.
Oh, and because racism. WTF is the difference between an asian and a british smile exactly? Someone please explain.
December 12, 2008
One of my favorite, favorite books. And one of my favorite authors.
I read this one at least two times a year.
R.A. MacAvoy has this ability to write both sparsely and with a richness that makes me want to buy her laundry lists :)
Tea with the Black Dragon and its sequel, Twisting the Rope, and absolute must reading if you enjoy philosophical fiction that weaves in humor and great characters as well.
I read this one at least two times a year.
R.A. MacAvoy has this ability to write both sparsely and with a richness that makes me want to buy her laundry lists :)
Tea with the Black Dragon and its sequel, Twisting the Rope, and absolute must reading if you enjoy philosophical fiction that weaves in humor and great characters as well.
December 10, 2019
Upped to 5 stars on this reread (2019) -- perhaps because I've just read several mediocre books? Regardless, I'm glad to have a copy now, so I can read it again in a few years. And if you never have, or it's been awhile -- there's nothing else quite like it. Pretty nearly perfect.
I liked it a lot in 1994, on a reread.
Jo Walton's is the review to read:
"Tea With the Black Dragon is an odd but charming book. It’s the kind of book that when someone mentions it, you smile. It’s unusual in a number of ways. It’s set at a very precise moment of the early eighties, which can be deduced from the very specific technology -- but it’s a fantasy. It has an action-adventure plot with kidnapping, embezzlement and early eighties computer fraud -- but that’s secondary to what it’s about. ... The whole book is infused with Chinese mythology and CPM era computers. It’s very short, barely a couple of hours� read, which was unusual even when books used to be shorter."
"Tea With the Black Dragon" won a Locus Award for best first novel, and was nominated for a batch of other awards.
I liked it a lot in 1994, on a reread.
Jo Walton's is the review to read:
"Tea With the Black Dragon is an odd but charming book. It’s the kind of book that when someone mentions it, you smile. It’s unusual in a number of ways. It’s set at a very precise moment of the early eighties, which can be deduced from the very specific technology -- but it’s a fantasy. It has an action-adventure plot with kidnapping, embezzlement and early eighties computer fraud -- but that’s secondary to what it’s about. ... The whole book is infused with Chinese mythology and CPM era computers. It’s very short, barely a couple of hours� read, which was unusual even when books used to be shorter."
"Tea With the Black Dragon" won a Locus Award for best first novel, and was nominated for a batch of other awards.
July 17, 2016
25% and DNF.
This is a short little thing, I shouldn't just quit it like that, but I can't do this. Everything about this book makes me not want to read it at all. Sorry about that. I'm not writing the review to diss or to try to hate on this, but I do not want to forget my reasons why I got absolutely annoyed by it.
Martha Macnamara's daughter is in trouble, so she does what most of us would; calls her mother, so said mother leaves New York to meet her in San Francisco. In her posh hotel she meets a weird Asian man, named Mayland Long, who seems impossibly old for someone looking middle-aged. Once Martha's daughter, Elisabeth doesn't show up, they decide to find her.
Sounds suspenseful, hm? A mother trying to find her daughter, desperately seeking the help of a mysterious man. HAHA. Yeeeeah, no. We will have no Liam Neeson style a'la Taken. No. Martha Macnamara is an absolute airhead. Her daughter is impossible to access and she has no idea what happened to her, maybe her body is rotting in a ditch, maybe some Saw thing is happening to her. Martha... marvels on chandeliers, plays with toy cars, listens to stories about random shit told by Long. They hang out. She laughs when Long is trying to ask questions to her daughter's old acquaintance and doesn't even pay attention to the things being said.
In short, she feels like a kid with attention issues in the body of a middle-aged woman. So annoying.
But hey, the prose is actually just like the protagonist; it drifts around and makes me skim, which is not something I enjoy. But is all just feels so inconsequential, like a song that was meant to be background for something and when you pay attention, it just feels like it was written by a squirrel of average intelligence. Maybe it was a thing in the 80's that I should know about to not be some uncultured swine, I don't even know, I just feel I am not enjoying myself and that's that.
To me it's all just uncomfortable and... dare I say, pretentious?
Another thing. Miss MacAvoy obviously has her interests, like Irish mythology and Taoism and all, which is nice, but her characters keep talking about things that you will not get if you are not actually knowledgeable about the exact things she is. It makes me feel totally out of the loop. Don't get me wrong, I like looking up a few things that I hear about in books, that can be interesting, but this level of artsy prose with things I have no knowledge about mix together into a jumbled mess of nonsense to me.
As I finished the book fast, I can't say much more about the story and resolution and the overall pacing, but god, this wasn't one for me. At this point I don't feel I should keep reading when nothing at all works for me.
Not going to lie, I am a bit disappointed. I wanted to read this book for a long time and all.
So long and don't drag on! (Hurr hurr, get it? Dragon. Shoot me now, after that pun not even my mother would look for me if I disappeared. Sorry.)
This is a short little thing, I shouldn't just quit it like that, but I can't do this. Everything about this book makes me not want to read it at all. Sorry about that. I'm not writing the review to diss or to try to hate on this, but I do not want to forget my reasons why I got absolutely annoyed by it.
Martha Macnamara's daughter is in trouble, so she does what most of us would; calls her mother, so said mother leaves New York to meet her in San Francisco. In her posh hotel she meets a weird Asian man, named Mayland Long, who seems impossibly old for someone looking middle-aged. Once Martha's daughter, Elisabeth doesn't show up, they decide to find her.
Sounds suspenseful, hm? A mother trying to find her daughter, desperately seeking the help of a mysterious man. HAHA. Yeeeeah, no. We will have no Liam Neeson style a'la Taken. No. Martha Macnamara is an absolute airhead. Her daughter is impossible to access and she has no idea what happened to her, maybe her body is rotting in a ditch, maybe some Saw thing is happening to her. Martha... marvels on chandeliers, plays with toy cars, listens to stories about random shit told by Long. They hang out. She laughs when Long is trying to ask questions to her daughter's old acquaintance and doesn't even pay attention to the things being said.
In short, she feels like a kid with attention issues in the body of a middle-aged woman. So annoying.
But hey, the prose is actually just like the protagonist; it drifts around and makes me skim, which is not something I enjoy. But is all just feels so inconsequential, like a song that was meant to be background for something and when you pay attention, it just feels like it was written by a squirrel of average intelligence. Maybe it was a thing in the 80's that I should know about to not be some uncultured swine, I don't even know, I just feel I am not enjoying myself and that's that.
To me it's all just uncomfortable and... dare I say, pretentious?
Another thing. Miss MacAvoy obviously has her interests, like Irish mythology and Taoism and all, which is nice, but her characters keep talking about things that you will not get if you are not actually knowledgeable about the exact things she is. It makes me feel totally out of the loop. Don't get me wrong, I like looking up a few things that I hear about in books, that can be interesting, but this level of artsy prose with things I have no knowledge about mix together into a jumbled mess of nonsense to me.
As I finished the book fast, I can't say much more about the story and resolution and the overall pacing, but god, this wasn't one for me. At this point I don't feel I should keep reading when nothing at all works for me.
Not going to lie, I am a bit disappointed. I wanted to read this book for a long time and all.
So long and don't drag on! (Hurr hurr, get it? Dragon. Shoot me now, after that pun not even my mother would look for me if I disappeared. Sorry.)
July 17, 2012
[7/10]
This was a fast read, and a pleasant one. The plot would have worked well, I think, even without the supernatural elements. It reminds me of some books by James Hadley Chase with his band of crooks setting up a clever heist and then turning on each other after the deed is done. A plus for me is the age of the two main characters : Martha MacNamara a spirited 50 something violinist, and Mayland Long - a mysterious gentleman who claims to be quite a few centuries older. There are a couple of younger actors in the book, Liz and Fred Frish, and they balance nicely the older generation discourse. I'm not giving any hints about the nature of the heist, because it is not revealed at the start of the book, I would just mention that the parts dealing with computers are quite well researched and brought some nostalgia avout 8080 chipsets and magnetic band software loaded from a casette player.
Being a bit on the short side, the book doesn't go too deeply into character background and motivations, but what there is mesh well with the action thriller plot. I would have liked to spend more pages on the history of Oolong (Chinese Dragons apparently love to drink tea and read books), but I guess this would have slowed down the pace considerably. Overall, I think MacAvoy had some cool ideas here and some beautiful romantic moments, but the writing is not in the same class. Dialogue was stilted and the prose didn't shine like in similar contemporary fantasies by Patricia McKillip, Peter S Beagle or Angela Carter.
This was a fast read, and a pleasant one. The plot would have worked well, I think, even without the supernatural elements. It reminds me of some books by James Hadley Chase with his band of crooks setting up a clever heist and then turning on each other after the deed is done. A plus for me is the age of the two main characters : Martha MacNamara a spirited 50 something violinist, and Mayland Long - a mysterious gentleman who claims to be quite a few centuries older. There are a couple of younger actors in the book, Liz and Fred Frish, and they balance nicely the older generation discourse. I'm not giving any hints about the nature of the heist, because it is not revealed at the start of the book, I would just mention that the parts dealing with computers are quite well researched and brought some nostalgia avout 8080 chipsets and magnetic band software loaded from a casette player.
Being a bit on the short side, the book doesn't go too deeply into character background and motivations, but what there is mesh well with the action thriller plot. I would have liked to spend more pages on the history of Oolong (Chinese Dragons apparently love to drink tea and read books), but I guess this would have slowed down the pace considerably. Overall, I think MacAvoy had some cool ideas here and some beautiful romantic moments, but the writing is not in the same class. Dialogue was stilted and the prose didn't shine like in similar contemporary fantasies by Patricia McKillip, Peter S Beagle or Angela Carter.
December 4, 2023
Tea with the Black Dragon should have wowed me. I usually love books that combine several of my disparate interest together in surprising ways, which is just what this book appeared to be. The protagonist is a fiddler in a Celtic band, just as I once was years ago. The story concerns her befriending a mysterious gentleman who hints that he is actually an ancient Chinese Black Dragon (a point that is left tantalizingly ambiguous). Together they discuss music, Celtic legends, Zen, and such � all particular interest of mine. All of this is exactly in my sweet spot.
But, damn it, it just doesn’t work. The writing (beyond the dialogue, which is done fairly well) is stilted. The protagonist comes off as a flake, and not necessarily in a good way. The story itself turns out to be a rather dull mystery that really didn’t engage me. So much promise � so little pay off. I originally read this book nearly 40 years ago when it was still new. In the intervening years I remembered it more for what it promised than for what it actually delivered, so this reread was a true disappointment.
I should also note, (for those who get worked up about such things) that the book did not age well. Descriptions of Mr. Long (the Black Dragon) being “Oriental� and other such references to his race that didn’t raise eyebrows in 1983 are currently viewed as unacceptable and offensive, so if you tend to judge old books by current standards, be warned.
But, damn it, it just doesn’t work. The writing (beyond the dialogue, which is done fairly well) is stilted. The protagonist comes off as a flake, and not necessarily in a good way. The story itself turns out to be a rather dull mystery that really didn’t engage me. So much promise � so little pay off. I originally read this book nearly 40 years ago when it was still new. In the intervening years I remembered it more for what it promised than for what it actually delivered, so this reread was a true disappointment.
I should also note, (for those who get worked up about such things) that the book did not age well. Descriptions of Mr. Long (the Black Dragon) being “Oriental� and other such references to his race that didn’t raise eyebrows in 1983 are currently viewed as unacceptable and offensive, so if you tend to judge old books by current standards, be warned.
July 23, 2008
is an author who seems not to write as a career, but rather because she has a story she wishes to tell. Some authors seem to be telling the same story again and again, and I do not begrudge them that: it's the story they're interested in, and generally they are good at it. MacAvoy, however, seems to write one story well, and then move on to the next, which is generally completely unrelated-- not to say she doesn't write sequels, but when she is done with a story, she moves on, and writes the next thing.
This may make her less marketable, but I have never read anything by her that I didn't enjoy.
is an example of what is apparently now called Urban Fantasy, (I think? Is there an oversight body?), a fantasy story set mostly in the here and now, with the impingement of the fantastical on the edges. Except that the here and now in which it was written is 1984, which makes it a sort of historical artifact, especially if you're me. (I was alive in 1984, but not a keen cultural observer.) It is a bit like by , another author who seems to write only when a new story comes to her.
Between the title, and the fact that there is a Mr. Long in this book, I don't think there actually is any way I could spoil this book for you, so I'm not going to take any great pains to avoid it.
Martha Macnamara is a middle-aged hippie, a musician who couch surfs her way across America. Her daughter is a driven computer programmer who has gotten herself into trouble. Mr Long is the interesting man Ms. Macnamara meets when she comes to San Francisco, hoping to help her daughter.
This book is in general delightful, but my qualm was the way in which Mrs Macnamara was presented by the book as somehow an exceptional spirit, the qualities of whom are evidently self-evident and overwhelmingly attractive to the titular black dragon. I liked her, and I think she would be the sort of friend one would welcome when she came and collapse in gratitude when she left, but the black dragon seems to hold her in much higher esteem than that, and the reason why was not clear to me.
This may make her less marketable, but I have never read anything by her that I didn't enjoy.
is an example of what is apparently now called Urban Fantasy, (I think? Is there an oversight body?), a fantasy story set mostly in the here and now, with the impingement of the fantastical on the edges. Except that the here and now in which it was written is 1984, which makes it a sort of historical artifact, especially if you're me. (I was alive in 1984, but not a keen cultural observer.) It is a bit like by , another author who seems to write only when a new story comes to her.
Between the title, and the fact that there is a Mr. Long in this book, I don't think there actually is any way I could spoil this book for you, so I'm not going to take any great pains to avoid it.
Martha Macnamara is a middle-aged hippie, a musician who couch surfs her way across America. Her daughter is a driven computer programmer who has gotten herself into trouble. Mr Long is the interesting man Ms. Macnamara meets when she comes to San Francisco, hoping to help her daughter.
This book is in general delightful, but my qualm was the way in which Mrs Macnamara was presented by the book as somehow an exceptional spirit, the qualities of whom are evidently self-evident and overwhelmingly attractive to the titular black dragon. I liked her, and I think she would be the sort of friend one would welcome when she came and collapse in gratitude when she left, but the black dragon seems to hold her in much higher esteem than that, and the reason why was not clear to me.
May 26, 2018
I've read the book as part of my r/fantasy Bingo challenge. It's a charming and unusual contemporary fantasy.
Titular dragon is Mayland Long; he has tea with Martha Macnamara, who has just checked into the hotel, where he lives. Mr Long is seeking truth; Martha is looking for her missing daughter Liz, who summoned her a while ago. Mayland decided to help Martha in search of her daughter.
Not an easy task - as they follow the trails, things get a little ugly and dangerous.
It's a short (under 200 pages) novella that contains a love story, questions about human nature, forays into eighties computer science, and drama.
I appreciate compact writing, and it seems MacAvoy can do this well. Despite being short, the story manages to engage the reader, convey emotions, surprise (well, just a tiny bit).
The book is classified as fantasy, but, truth be told I think it's something of a stretch. While Mayland claims to be a dragon, in the end, the claims remain claims. We don't get a full dragon. On the other hand, clues are here. It may be just a play of light, but his hands may remind talons. Also, which sexagenerian is able to leap in the air or shred the doors with his hands?
Despite this fantasy hints, it's more of a old-style thriller than urban fantasy.
If you're interested in “official� opinions, Tea with the Black Dragon was nominated for the Phillip K. Dick, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. MacAvoy won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction/Fantasy writer in 1984.
If you're interested in more personal opinions - for me, it's a subtle but predictable book. I enjoyed it, but it's not a story I loved.
Titular dragon is Mayland Long; he has tea with Martha Macnamara, who has just checked into the hotel, where he lives. Mr Long is seeking truth; Martha is looking for her missing daughter Liz, who summoned her a while ago. Mayland decided to help Martha in search of her daughter.
Not an easy task - as they follow the trails, things get a little ugly and dangerous.
It's a short (under 200 pages) novella that contains a love story, questions about human nature, forays into eighties computer science, and drama.
I appreciate compact writing, and it seems MacAvoy can do this well. Despite being short, the story manages to engage the reader, convey emotions, surprise (well, just a tiny bit).
The book is classified as fantasy, but, truth be told I think it's something of a stretch. While Mayland claims to be a dragon, in the end, the claims remain claims. We don't get a full dragon. On the other hand, clues are here. It may be just a play of light, but his hands may remind talons. Also, which sexagenerian is able to leap in the air or shred the doors with his hands?
Despite this fantasy hints, it's more of a old-style thriller than urban fantasy.
If you're interested in “official� opinions, Tea with the Black Dragon was nominated for the Phillip K. Dick, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. MacAvoy won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction/Fantasy writer in 1984.
If you're interested in more personal opinions - for me, it's a subtle but predictable book. I enjoyed it, but it's not a story I loved.
June 30, 2014
-Fantasía casi sin parecerlo -.
Género. Narrativa Fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. Martha Macnamara, madre preocupada por una hija que trabaja en el mundo de la informática, conoce al señor Mayland Long, un peculiar y culto caballero realmente interesado en Martha y a la que acompañará para averiguar qué sucede con su hija.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
Género. Narrativa Fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. Martha Macnamara, madre preocupada por una hija que trabaja en el mundo de la informática, conoce al señor Mayland Long, un peculiar y culto caballero realmente interesado en Martha y a la que acompañará para averiguar qué sucede con su hija.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
June 24, 2016
Read this multiple times because I liked it so much.
October 25, 2010
Sadly, this was a case of an old favourite not quite living up to my memory of it. I remember this having been a great book, it wasn't quite as wonderful as I thought.
All the same, this is still a lovely, little story. I think it is the themes and concepts I remember most; the search for truth and how a dragon might go about trying to find it. Those are still wonderful ideas and I loved revisiting them.
The story itself doesn't hold them up as well as it might, but is well worth taking the time to read.
I hadn't realised there was actually so little of Martha in the story. It's is Mayland Long's book more than it is hers, and I love him to pieces. He's a truly wonderful character.
The computing aspects of the story have dated - how could they not with the advances that have been made since the book was published. I did giggle a little at the mention of "a 16K machine". I'm now computer expert, but even I know that's orders of magnitude behind some of today's computers.
But the themes are far more timeless and it is easy to read past the details that have dated to find the turth of the story beyond them.
I still firmly recommend "Tea with the Black Dragon" as a good read. Enjoy Mayland Long and his personal journey through the pages. It's worth it.
All the same, this is still a lovely, little story. I think it is the themes and concepts I remember most; the search for truth and how a dragon might go about trying to find it. Those are still wonderful ideas and I loved revisiting them.
The story itself doesn't hold them up as well as it might, but is well worth taking the time to read.
I hadn't realised there was actually so little of Martha in the story. It's is Mayland Long's book more than it is hers, and I love him to pieces. He's a truly wonderful character.
The computing aspects of the story have dated - how could they not with the advances that have been made since the book was published. I did giggle a little at the mention of "a 16K machine". I'm now computer expert, but even I know that's orders of magnitude behind some of today's computers.
But the themes are far more timeless and it is easy to read past the details that have dated to find the turth of the story beyond them.
I still firmly recommend "Tea with the Black Dragon" as a good read. Enjoy Mayland Long and his personal journey through the pages. It's worth it.
February 22, 2018
A romantic urban fantasy from 1983, and I enjoyed it. It reminds me of Barbara Hambly’s sci-fi/fantasy from the 80’s. It’s slight, and perhaps a little melodramatic, and it’s not much of a romance since it’s pretty much a case of love at first sight, but it gets extra points because the love interest is a middle-aged woman.
Martha, an ethereal musician, has flown to San Francisco in response to a vague distress call from her daughter. In the hotel restaurant she meets Long, a “slight Eurasian man of indeterminate age� with “improbable� hands. (“How wonderful! You could span way over two octaves!�). He tells her some fantastical stories, and “her listening had an intensity which reached out into the speaker and eased the meaning from him�.
The fall in love at once, but they don’t realize it until the daughter goes missing, then Martha goes missing, and Long rides to the rescue in his Citroën. I liked his mix of vulnerability and supernatural strength.
There is some fun 80’s technology: the daughter is a programmer who has gotten mixed up in a scheme to steal money from the bank she is writing software for. There are copies of Dr. Dobb’s Journal lying around everywhere.
Martha, an ethereal musician, has flown to San Francisco in response to a vague distress call from her daughter. In the hotel restaurant she meets Long, a “slight Eurasian man of indeterminate age� with “improbable� hands. (“How wonderful! You could span way over two octaves!�). He tells her some fantastical stories, and “her listening had an intensity which reached out into the speaker and eased the meaning from him�.
The fall in love at once, but they don’t realize it until the daughter goes missing, then Martha goes missing, and Long rides to the rescue in his Citroën. I liked his mix of vulnerability and supernatural strength.
There is some fun 80’s technology: the daughter is a programmer who has gotten mixed up in a scheme to steal money from the bank she is writing software for. There are copies of Dr. Dobb’s Journal lying around everywhere.
August 20, 2014
Well, that was different.
I have a feeling that if I'd read this in the 80s, I'd have rated it higher. But, here and now, it feels very dated--like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Narnia books, or The Neverending Story. (Please note: I'm not really referring to the romance, or old computer tech, but to the 'feel').
I've been interested in reading this for years, so was very happy to find it on sale for kindle for $1.99.
The proofing and formatting is not wonderful, (no scene breaks), but I'm happy to acquire it at that price point. I wouldn't be averse to reading the sequel, but I'm definitely not interested in paying full price for it since several reviews point out it is even more poorly edited than this one.
Publishers & Authors, you do yourselves no favors by putting out shoddily edited products. Do you think your customers are stupid?
I have a feeling that if I'd read this in the 80s, I'd have rated it higher. But, here and now, it feels very dated--like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Narnia books, or The Neverending Story. (Please note: I'm not really referring to the romance, or old computer tech, but to the 'feel').
I've been interested in reading this for years, so was very happy to find it on sale for kindle for $1.99.
The proofing and formatting is not wonderful, (no scene breaks), but I'm happy to acquire it at that price point. I wouldn't be averse to reading the sequel, but I'm definitely not interested in paying full price for it since several reviews point out it is even more poorly edited than this one.
Publishers & Authors, you do yourselves no favors by putting out shoddily edited products. Do you think your customers are stupid?
February 23, 2015
Un libro delicioso que describe unos personajes muy interesantes.
Acción, romance, y una increíble sorpresa.
Orientalismo, zen... una mezcla muy original que hará las delicias de los nostálgicos de los años 70.
Hace poco he descubierto que hay segunda parte, investigaré si está traducida al español.
Acción, romance, y una increíble sorpresa.
Orientalismo, zen... una mezcla muy original que hará las delicias de los nostálgicos de los años 70.
Hace poco he descubierto que hay segunda parte, investigaré si está traducida al español.
July 8, 2017
It's not a bad book, a quick read. A bit predictable, but fun. Diverting.
September 10, 2019
I was rooting around in my attic a few days ago and I found this little gem. I had read it in 1988 which was the year I purchased it and I recalled that I had really liked it. So I read this again in between reading Reunion: Surviving the Evacuation book. I needed something less zombie and this fit the ticket. It is lovely...a story of a dragon who has forgotten how to be a dragon and how he meets and falls in love with a human woman. It is peppered with references to John Donne and Thomas the Rhymer and Celtic music. Martha Macnamara, the woman Mayland Long meets and falls in love with is a fifty year old woman, a musician looking for her daughter. Mayland Long is older yet, ageless even. I liked both characters very much, the only thing I didn’t like was that it wasn’t long enough.
August 24, 2015
***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.
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.
June 16, 2016
Martha Macnamara flies out to San Francisco to meet her estranged daughter, Liz, who is in some kind of trouble. When Liz doesn’t show up for their meeting, Martha is left not knowing where to turn. Then the bartender in the luxurious hotel where she is staying introduces her to the mysterious Mayland Long, a wealthy Chinese man who lives in the hotel. He tells Martha that she and Long have a lot in common: they both have unique ways of looking at life, and they both love to read. He laughs when he whispers that Mr. Long once told him that he used to be a Chinese black dragon who loved to read. Martha and Mr. Long become friends, and she asks him to help her find her daughter. Then Martha disappears, and Mayland Long must rely on his intelligence, enormous strength, and his ability to understand people to sort through the clues and find both women before it’s too late.
I really enjoyed this mystery. The magic of the dragon is there, but it’s subtle. Mayland Long, or Oolong, is stuck in human form. He deals with fatigue, gunshot wounds, and hunger just like any other human, yet he has the determination to keep going. Plus, he has some special skills that help him just when he needs them. Mostly, he is a curious, gentle soul who has searched for centuries for truth, and when he finds Martha, he knows he has found his truth.
Martha is delightful, a talented violinist who sacrificed her career to raise her daughter (which her daughter resents), and now she tours with a Celtic band, earning just enough to get by. She has the ability to see the real person beneath the surface, and she is not afraid to say what she thinks.
The story takes place when computer technology was in its infancy and cassette tapes were used instead of CDs, but this only makes the book more interesting and does not distract from the charm of the two main characters.
I really enjoyed this mystery. The magic of the dragon is there, but it’s subtle. Mayland Long, or Oolong, is stuck in human form. He deals with fatigue, gunshot wounds, and hunger just like any other human, yet he has the determination to keep going. Plus, he has some special skills that help him just when he needs them. Mostly, he is a curious, gentle soul who has searched for centuries for truth, and when he finds Martha, he knows he has found his truth.
Martha is delightful, a talented violinist who sacrificed her career to raise her daughter (which her daughter resents), and now she tours with a Celtic band, earning just enough to get by. She has the ability to see the real person beneath the surface, and she is not afraid to say what she thinks.
The story takes place when computer technology was in its infancy and cassette tapes were used instead of CDs, but this only makes the book more interesting and does not distract from the charm of the two main characters.
September 2, 2011
There’s beauty in subtlety. Tea with the Black Dragon does not follow typical fantasy conventions; in fact the fantasy elements remain in the background with the crux of the story focusing on a spiritual and emotional awakening and the search for missing persons. It is unusual not to delve into the power and life of an ancient and magical figure, since they tend to be the most interesting part of the story, but MacAvoy does not do this. He instead masterfully plays with the reader only giving us glimmers of Mayland Long’s life, leaving us wanting more and at the same time knowing that Long’s future lies in the present and that his past is irrelevant. The book also mentions Chinese philosophy and mythology but again only very lightly, giving just what is needed and nothing more. Words are not wasted by MacAvoy, everything has a purpose and a reason, and because of this the book has a very mysterious feel to it. A lot of your questions will go unanswered, but there’s a beauty in that.
Most fantasy novels choose to go back to a preindustrial world or a totally new world from our own; this book, however, is written in modern times and includes present-day technology (at least for when it was written; it seems a bit out dated now). At first I didn’t know how this would work, having dragons and computer wizards in the same novel. I’ll admit I was skeptical, perhaps because I’m very hesitant to accept new technologies in the first place--they have to grow on me and I tend to like fantasy because it escapes into imaginative worlds. However, MacAvoy pulls it off beautifully. He crafts a tale about an old and ancient being, one who finds truth in the most unlikely of places, the realm of humans. A delight to read!
Most fantasy novels choose to go back to a preindustrial world or a totally new world from our own; this book, however, is written in modern times and includes present-day technology (at least for when it was written; it seems a bit out dated now). At first I didn’t know how this would work, having dragons and computer wizards in the same novel. I’ll admit I was skeptical, perhaps because I’m very hesitant to accept new technologies in the first place--they have to grow on me and I tend to like fantasy because it escapes into imaginative worlds. However, MacAvoy pulls it off beautifully. He crafts a tale about an old and ancient being, one who finds truth in the most unlikely of places, the realm of humans. A delight to read!
March 13, 2017
This was a lot different than I expected. I thought it would be more of a fantasy, but that is really very much in the background and the story is really about trying to find some missing persons. Which, really, is how the blurb reads, but I must have forgotten that by the time I actually read it. I enjoyed the two protagonists being older and I thought some of the writing was beautiful. A quick read.
July 27, 2017
Will review soon at .
March 11, 2018
“A most odd and engaging fantasy.� This is how Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine described Tea with the Black Dragon. Most of the other reviews on the back of the book mirror this sentiment. “MacAvoy offers that bright and treasured rarity, a new fantasy tale,� said Locus, and the Chicago Sun-Times claimed that it was “a gem of contemporary fantasy.�
I feel like I was justified expecting Tea with the Black Dragon to be a fantasy novel.
The story starts with Martha Macnamara in a hotel restaurant, waiting for her daughter. Instead she meets Mayland Long, and they hit it off. When Martha’s daughter never shows up, Martha—with Mayland’s help—go looking for her.
Tea with the Black Dragon is set in San Francisco in the 1980s. There is no magic. And given that plot, how can it be a fantasy? Okay, fine, Mayland used to be a dragon. Used to—as in, the magic that made him human happened off screen, long before the start of the book. I kept waiting for him to become a dragon again, or otherwise do dragon-y things, thus justifying the label of ‘fantasy.� Aside from keen eyesight and above-average strength, though, nada. He doesn’t need to have been a dragon for this book to work.
I’ll admit that my expectation (and desire) to read a fantasy book—but then being met with an entirely different sort of book—probably did my reading of Tea with the Black Dragon no favors. I kept expecting things that didn’t happen, which got between me and the story.
That said, I love reading in general. I’m not a strictly speculative fiction kind of woman, so I could have been wooed into loving this book. And while the book has some merits, on average, I was not wooed.
Let’s start with what I didn’t like.
Mayland Long is Chinese, after a fashion. He’s a Chinese dragon, anyway, or at least claims to be. At one point his smile is described as “not Chinese, but English,� and then later, in some reversal that I don’t understand, his smile is described as “not English, but Chinese.�
Are smiles so different? Sure, a sly smile versus a mocking smile versus an ecstatic smile—those are all variations on a smile. The difference between them is clear by the adjective paired with them. How does “English� or “Chinese� qualify Mayland’s smile? The author never explains it. This leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Smiles are universal.
The line about the Chinese versus English smile isn’t so terrible, and if it were the only racially-related thing that felt ‘off,� I’d probably not have given it second thought. But even as a white woman who isn’t finely attuned to micro-aggressions, I felt them regularly in this book.
As Mayland meets with someone, the interaction, as filtered through Martha’s POV, reads “Dr. Pecollo was a much heavier man than the Eurasian.� If Mayland weren’t Chinese (and presumed to be of mixed ancestry by Martha), that line would have read “Dr. Pecollo was a much heavier man than Mayland.�
See? Doesn’t that sound better?
Nothing about in this book feels pointedly, bigotedly racist. If anything, Mayland is put on a pedestal, but in putting him on that pedestal he’s still othered, pretty much exclusively because of his appearance and perceived ethnicity. And he's constantly othered. I wanted to throw my hands up, yell "I get it, he's Asian! Now dear cod, focus on the plot."
Or, perhaps, she ought to have focused on the story-telling.
As far as I can tell, there were roughly 10 people in the book, total. Seven of them were—if only for a moment—POV characters. Early in the story, as Martha meets Mayland, the hops between their heads are frequent and sudden enough that I had to back pedal to keep things straight. Near the end of the book, we duck into a tertiary character’s head for the span of a paragraph, then pop back out again. At a tense moment, we switch from Mayland’s POV to the antagonist’s, presumably to make Mayland’s daring attempt at escape more tense. This only lasts for a paragraph or two, and then we never see inside the antagonist’s head again.
That the book is a scant 166 pages makes these POV changes feel all the more intrusive. It was hard to feel like I got to know anyone when I never got to spend much time with them.
Another thing that crowded the book was technical jargon. As Tea with the Black Dragon revolves around the disappearance of a computer programmer, I expected—even looked forward to—absurd old/weird technology.
But Tea with the Black Dragon overdid it for me. The worst part is that it isn’t necessary for the plot, or even the setting. Neither Mayland nor Martha uses computers. Computers are going to come up, but there’s no reason to dwell on them.
This jargon, then, exists almost exclusively in conversation held for its own sake. It’s superfluous, confusing, and painfully dated. For example, a character says of Martha’s daughter: “just give her a handful of bipolar VLSI chips and stand back.�
Uh, okay.
Then, between jargon-heavy dialogue, we get stuck with purple prose—especially when it has to do with eyes.
“Martha’s blue china eyes shone like beads.�
Okay, okay, that’s not so bad, but they’re described this way at least a half-dozen times. Then, when I’m about ready to scream with all the mention of her damned-blue sparkling eyes, I’m treated to:
“Blue eyes and gold eyes met: two colors of flame.�
Just ugh.
And a cat gets killed in the stupidest way ever: it's own owner shoots it because said owner mistakes the sound of a seven-pound cat on the floorboards for a grown-ass man.
But my least favorite thing about the entire book—and there’s a lot to dislike—is Martha herself. I hate to say this, but I’m going to. Martha Macnamara is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. After a conversation where her daughter says that she’s in trouble, Martha flies to the west coast to meet her. And when her daughter doesn’t show up or call, Martha is oddly unperturbed.
When Mayland and Martha go out hunting for said daughter, Martha lets Mayland take the lead. If she had reason to think that Mayland would be a better investigator, then that would be a shrewd decision. But she doesn’t have reason to think that. And, worse than taking a back seat, Martha entirely checks out of the investigation. At one point, while Mayland is talking to a lead, Martha is playing with a remote controlled car. Afterwards, as Mayland discusses what he discovered, she blurts out that she ought to have owned a toy store.
Later, during a much more tense meeting with the same end goal, Martha is too distracted to pay attention to what Mayland and his informant are saying. Why is she distracted, you ask? She wants to know how the informant won the trophies on his shelves. Srsly.
The line that truly convinced me of her Manic Pixie state, though, is thus: “She was tired and a little depressed, so she felt it incumbent upon her to cheer up Mr. Long.�
Her daughter is missing, and she feels that she must cheer up Mayland? You can argue that it’s a coping mechanism and by cheering up/tending to Mayland she’ll distract herself from the fact that her daughter is missing ... but that feeling isn’t present in the book. After Martha tries to change the subject to more pleasant things, Mayland apologizes for having not found her daughter yet, and she goes on a tear propping him up and downplaying the severity of the fact that her daughter is missing and that all signs point to significantly foul play.
In the end, I was not surprised to find out that Martha exists almost solely as a source of inspiration for Mayland. Combine that with the fact that she does almost nothing and doesn’t affect the main plot—except in the ‘helpless maiden� sort of way—and it’s clear: Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Now, despite my words thus far, there were some things I rather liked:
In trying to find Martha’s daughter, Mayland makes an unexpected friend. I like this friend. There’s nothing terribly special about him—he’s not funny or particularly clever or brave. Rather, the tremendous thing about him is the perfection in which his normalcy is captured. He’s good to have in the story, and yet if he walked off the pages and into real-life, he’d seem entirely like he belonged here.
I also like that Mayland and Martha are not kids. Martha’s got a twenty-something kid herself, and Mayland looks to be in his 50s or 60s, though, as a dragon, he’s much older than that. As main characters tend to be young adults, I enjoyed this deviation from the standard.
Speaking of deviations from the norm, leading men are—sadly—normally white, and Asian men are rarely romantic leads. Mayland is a Chinese romantic lead. I very much enjoy that the author bucked expectations in this manner. It’s been over thirty years since this book was written, and this sort of representation is still a struggle.
And, despite the weirdness revolving around how he’s described, I liked Mayland. His interaction with the cat (RIP Blanco) made me want to give him a hug, and the camaraderie and loyalty between him and his unexpected friend is touching. Unlike most characters chasing their Manic Pixie Dream Partner, I never felt like Mayland put the onus of himself on Martha’s shoulders. His involvement with her isn’t entirely honorable—he mostly offers to help look into the daughter’s disappearance because he’s afraid of losing contact with Martha—but also at no point does he lay his pieces before Martha and ask her to fix him. The satisfaction and sense of completion he gets from Martha, he gets without overburdening her, or, well, burdening her at all. He’s a good guy. Now, if he only weren’t convinced he needed Martha to complete him.
I didn’t love this book, but, well, I did finish it. I was mostly curious if and how it would turn into a fantasy, and I did want to see what Mayland got up to. I do think I would have liked it more had I gone into it expecting it to be a light romance-thriller with dashes of mystery, which, w,ere I asked to label this baby with a genre, is what I would have come up with.
I think Tea with the Black Dragon is the sort of book that would lend itself to younger women. At thirty, the idea of a man looking to a woman to complete him doesn’t seem even remotely romantic. At twenty, I suspect I would have felt very differently.
Timing also probably matters. In 1983, Tea with the Black Dragon might have felt fresh and different, but shape-shifting erotica is pretty much a genre unto itself at this point. One shape-shifter, who no longer shifts, does little to intrigue me. Especially when the plot isn’t impacted by his post-shape-shifter status.
So I can understand all the glowing reviews online, most of which were written by folks who first read the book decades ago, but, well, I don’t share them.
[I read old fantasy and sci-fi novels written by women authors in search of forgotten gems. See more at ]
I feel like I was justified expecting Tea with the Black Dragon to be a fantasy novel.
The story starts with Martha Macnamara in a hotel restaurant, waiting for her daughter. Instead she meets Mayland Long, and they hit it off. When Martha’s daughter never shows up, Martha—with Mayland’s help—go looking for her.
Tea with the Black Dragon is set in San Francisco in the 1980s. There is no magic. And given that plot, how can it be a fantasy? Okay, fine, Mayland used to be a dragon. Used to—as in, the magic that made him human happened off screen, long before the start of the book. I kept waiting for him to become a dragon again, or otherwise do dragon-y things, thus justifying the label of ‘fantasy.� Aside from keen eyesight and above-average strength, though, nada. He doesn’t need to have been a dragon for this book to work.
I’ll admit that my expectation (and desire) to read a fantasy book—but then being met with an entirely different sort of book—probably did my reading of Tea with the Black Dragon no favors. I kept expecting things that didn’t happen, which got between me and the story.
That said, I love reading in general. I’m not a strictly speculative fiction kind of woman, so I could have been wooed into loving this book. And while the book has some merits, on average, I was not wooed.
Let’s start with what I didn’t like.
Mayland Long is Chinese, after a fashion. He’s a Chinese dragon, anyway, or at least claims to be. At one point his smile is described as “not Chinese, but English,� and then later, in some reversal that I don’t understand, his smile is described as “not English, but Chinese.�
Are smiles so different? Sure, a sly smile versus a mocking smile versus an ecstatic smile—those are all variations on a smile. The difference between them is clear by the adjective paired with them. How does “English� or “Chinese� qualify Mayland’s smile? The author never explains it. This leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Smiles are universal.
The line about the Chinese versus English smile isn’t so terrible, and if it were the only racially-related thing that felt ‘off,� I’d probably not have given it second thought. But even as a white woman who isn’t finely attuned to micro-aggressions, I felt them regularly in this book.
As Mayland meets with someone, the interaction, as filtered through Martha’s POV, reads “Dr. Pecollo was a much heavier man than the Eurasian.� If Mayland weren’t Chinese (and presumed to be of mixed ancestry by Martha), that line would have read “Dr. Pecollo was a much heavier man than Mayland.�
See? Doesn’t that sound better?
Nothing about in this book feels pointedly, bigotedly racist. If anything, Mayland is put on a pedestal, but in putting him on that pedestal he’s still othered, pretty much exclusively because of his appearance and perceived ethnicity. And he's constantly othered. I wanted to throw my hands up, yell "I get it, he's Asian! Now dear cod, focus on the plot."
Or, perhaps, she ought to have focused on the story-telling.
As far as I can tell, there were roughly 10 people in the book, total. Seven of them were—if only for a moment—POV characters. Early in the story, as Martha meets Mayland, the hops between their heads are frequent and sudden enough that I had to back pedal to keep things straight. Near the end of the book, we duck into a tertiary character’s head for the span of a paragraph, then pop back out again. At a tense moment, we switch from Mayland’s POV to the antagonist’s, presumably to make Mayland’s daring attempt at escape more tense. This only lasts for a paragraph or two, and then we never see inside the antagonist’s head again.
That the book is a scant 166 pages makes these POV changes feel all the more intrusive. It was hard to feel like I got to know anyone when I never got to spend much time with them.
Another thing that crowded the book was technical jargon. As Tea with the Black Dragon revolves around the disappearance of a computer programmer, I expected—even looked forward to—absurd old/weird technology.
But Tea with the Black Dragon overdid it for me. The worst part is that it isn’t necessary for the plot, or even the setting. Neither Mayland nor Martha uses computers. Computers are going to come up, but there’s no reason to dwell on them.
This jargon, then, exists almost exclusively in conversation held for its own sake. It’s superfluous, confusing, and painfully dated. For example, a character says of Martha’s daughter: “just give her a handful of bipolar VLSI chips and stand back.�
Uh, okay.
Then, between jargon-heavy dialogue, we get stuck with purple prose—especially when it has to do with eyes.
“Martha’s blue china eyes shone like beads.�
Okay, okay, that’s not so bad, but they’re described this way at least a half-dozen times. Then, when I’m about ready to scream with all the mention of her damned-blue sparkling eyes, I’m treated to:
“Blue eyes and gold eyes met: two colors of flame.�
Just ugh.
And a cat gets killed in the stupidest way ever: it's own owner shoots it because said owner mistakes the sound of a seven-pound cat on the floorboards for a grown-ass man.
But my least favorite thing about the entire book—and there’s a lot to dislike—is Martha herself. I hate to say this, but I’m going to. Martha Macnamara is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. After a conversation where her daughter says that she’s in trouble, Martha flies to the west coast to meet her. And when her daughter doesn’t show up or call, Martha is oddly unperturbed.
When Mayland and Martha go out hunting for said daughter, Martha lets Mayland take the lead. If she had reason to think that Mayland would be a better investigator, then that would be a shrewd decision. But she doesn’t have reason to think that. And, worse than taking a back seat, Martha entirely checks out of the investigation. At one point, while Mayland is talking to a lead, Martha is playing with a remote controlled car. Afterwards, as Mayland discusses what he discovered, she blurts out that she ought to have owned a toy store.
Later, during a much more tense meeting with the same end goal, Martha is too distracted to pay attention to what Mayland and his informant are saying. Why is she distracted, you ask? She wants to know how the informant won the trophies on his shelves. Srsly.
The line that truly convinced me of her Manic Pixie state, though, is thus: “She was tired and a little depressed, so she felt it incumbent upon her to cheer up Mr. Long.�
Her daughter is missing, and she feels that she must cheer up Mayland? You can argue that it’s a coping mechanism and by cheering up/tending to Mayland she’ll distract herself from the fact that her daughter is missing ... but that feeling isn’t present in the book. After Martha tries to change the subject to more pleasant things, Mayland apologizes for having not found her daughter yet, and she goes on a tear propping him up and downplaying the severity of the fact that her daughter is missing and that all signs point to significantly foul play.
In the end, I was not surprised to find out that Martha exists almost solely as a source of inspiration for Mayland. Combine that with the fact that she does almost nothing and doesn’t affect the main plot—except in the ‘helpless maiden� sort of way—and it’s clear: Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Now, despite my words thus far, there were some things I rather liked:
In trying to find Martha’s daughter, Mayland makes an unexpected friend. I like this friend. There’s nothing terribly special about him—he’s not funny or particularly clever or brave. Rather, the tremendous thing about him is the perfection in which his normalcy is captured. He’s good to have in the story, and yet if he walked off the pages and into real-life, he’d seem entirely like he belonged here.
I also like that Mayland and Martha are not kids. Martha’s got a twenty-something kid herself, and Mayland looks to be in his 50s or 60s, though, as a dragon, he’s much older than that. As main characters tend to be young adults, I enjoyed this deviation from the standard.
Speaking of deviations from the norm, leading men are—sadly—normally white, and Asian men are rarely romantic leads. Mayland is a Chinese romantic lead. I very much enjoy that the author bucked expectations in this manner. It’s been over thirty years since this book was written, and this sort of representation is still a struggle.
And, despite the weirdness revolving around how he’s described, I liked Mayland. His interaction with the cat (RIP Blanco) made me want to give him a hug, and the camaraderie and loyalty between him and his unexpected friend is touching. Unlike most characters chasing their Manic Pixie Dream Partner, I never felt like Mayland put the onus of himself on Martha’s shoulders. His involvement with her isn’t entirely honorable—he mostly offers to help look into the daughter’s disappearance because he’s afraid of losing contact with Martha—but also at no point does he lay his pieces before Martha and ask her to fix him. The satisfaction and sense of completion he gets from Martha, he gets without overburdening her, or, well, burdening her at all. He’s a good guy. Now, if he only weren’t convinced he needed Martha to complete him.
I didn’t love this book, but, well, I did finish it. I was mostly curious if and how it would turn into a fantasy, and I did want to see what Mayland got up to. I do think I would have liked it more had I gone into it expecting it to be a light romance-thriller with dashes of mystery, which, w,ere I asked to label this baby with a genre, is what I would have come up with.
I think Tea with the Black Dragon is the sort of book that would lend itself to younger women. At thirty, the idea of a man looking to a woman to complete him doesn’t seem even remotely romantic. At twenty, I suspect I would have felt very differently.
Timing also probably matters. In 1983, Tea with the Black Dragon might have felt fresh and different, but shape-shifting erotica is pretty much a genre unto itself at this point. One shape-shifter, who no longer shifts, does little to intrigue me. Especially when the plot isn’t impacted by his post-shape-shifter status.
So I can understand all the glowing reviews online, most of which were written by folks who first read the book decades ago, but, well, I don’t share them.
[I read old fantasy and sci-fi novels written by women authors in search of forgotten gems. See more at ]
July 31, 2018
This book has been on my TBR list for a long time, ever since it was in a Humble Book Bundle. I really enjoyed it. I don't know if I can categorize it, but there's an unusual romance plot, as well as some elements of crime fiction and some of light fantasy. I would almost call it urban fantasy, except it's nothing like anything else I've read in that genre. There's a strong theme of Eastern spirituality, but I don't know enough about that topic to understand it very well. Hopefully I'll understand it better when I read it again, and I'm sure that I will.
The romance is between a 50-year-old woman and a man who seems to be about the same age. I've never read a romance featuring a woman older than her early 40s, so I was really happy about that. I also liked the portrayal of the complex mother/daughter relationship between Martha and Liz. We never actually see them together, but their love for each other drives the whole plot. Liz believes that her mother deserves adulation from everyone she meets, and the author succeeded in creating a character who lives up to that high esteem, while still making Martha human and imperfect.
This book feels relevant to current discussions about the barriers women face in the tech industry, although it definitely isn't about that topic. It's amazing that this was first published in the early 80s, because it doesn't feel dated at all. I also like that the main villain is not mustache-twirlingly-evil, but bad in a relatively ordinary kind of way. This line is pretty insightful, and I think it applies pretty well to the people in tech who are often in the news these days:
Although it isn't a very long book, it's fairly atmospheric, with a lot of details about the setting (the San Francisco area). All of the major characters have point-of-view sections, but most of the story unfolds from Mr. Long's PoV. He's a wonderful character with an unusual perspective, and he's quite a badass, too.
As usual when I read outside of my main genre (romance), I had no idea how this would end. I was on the edge of my seat. I'm excited to read more by this author.
The romance is between a 50-year-old woman and a man who seems to be about the same age. I've never read a romance featuring a woman older than her early 40s, so I was really happy about that. I also liked the portrayal of the complex mother/daughter relationship between Martha and Liz. We never actually see them together, but their love for each other drives the whole plot. Liz believes that her mother deserves adulation from everyone she meets, and the author succeeded in creating a character who lives up to that high esteem, while still making Martha human and imperfect.
This book feels relevant to current discussions about the barriers women face in the tech industry, although it definitely isn't about that topic. It's amazing that this was first published in the early 80s, because it doesn't feel dated at all. I also like that the main villain is not mustache-twirlingly-evil, but bad in a relatively ordinary kind of way. This line is pretty insightful, and I think it applies pretty well to the people in tech who are often in the news these days:
He never obeys the rules if he thinks he can get away with it.
Although it isn't a very long book, it's fairly atmospheric, with a lot of details about the setting (the San Francisco area). All of the major characters have point-of-view sections, but most of the story unfolds from Mr. Long's PoV. He's a wonderful character with an unusual perspective, and he's quite a badass, too.
As usual when I read outside of my main genre (romance), I had no idea how this would end. I was on the edge of my seat. I'm excited to read more by this author.
July 22, 2008
I have a bit of a reading habit where anything with the word “dragon� in the title I pick up for that word alone. I found this book in a rummage bin, rather the worse for wear, and didn’t even pick it up for a song.
I found out later it’s both a Hugo and Nebula nominee circa 1984.
The plot is a bit serpentinous. You have the start of a quest, Martha trying to find her grown daughter, Elizabeth, and happens to meet and enlist the help of one enigmatic Mr. Long, an older man with a vaguely oriental appearance who has the habit of discussing his life as a black dragon if he drinks a little too much. No sooner is Long on the hunt than he happens to lose Martha, which is really worrisome as she may be what he’s been looking for all along.
So we have two damsels in distress, several computer programmers with more skill than sense, a looming daybreak deadline, a Zen prophecy lurking about, and one old dragon who is thinking it would be easier to just go back to sleep.
Long's thoughts and actions are definitely the best part of the novel. And I enjoyed very much reading of Martha, although Elizabeth I could never sympathize with. The computer wizardry that’s described is twenty years out of date, which is both a good thing and a bad depending upon how you look at it (bank-robbing computer programs: cliché? or easily recognized and understood?) And it’s just a slim little thing, not two hundred pages. How on earth did I miss this?
I have some friends in Silicon Valley. This book is so going to start making rounds there.
I found out later it’s both a Hugo and Nebula nominee circa 1984.
The plot is a bit serpentinous. You have the start of a quest, Martha trying to find her grown daughter, Elizabeth, and happens to meet and enlist the help of one enigmatic Mr. Long, an older man with a vaguely oriental appearance who has the habit of discussing his life as a black dragon if he drinks a little too much. No sooner is Long on the hunt than he happens to lose Martha, which is really worrisome as she may be what he’s been looking for all along.
So we have two damsels in distress, several computer programmers with more skill than sense, a looming daybreak deadline, a Zen prophecy lurking about, and one old dragon who is thinking it would be easier to just go back to sleep.
Long's thoughts and actions are definitely the best part of the novel. And I enjoyed very much reading of Martha, although Elizabeth I could never sympathize with. The computer wizardry that’s described is twenty years out of date, which is both a good thing and a bad depending upon how you look at it (bank-robbing computer programs: cliché? or easily recognized and understood?) And it’s just a slim little thing, not two hundred pages. How on earth did I miss this?
I have some friends in Silicon Valley. This book is so going to start making rounds there.
January 22, 2018
A truly delightful fantasy/mystery hybrid with warmth and wit to spare.
One could call this "Urban Fantasy", given the contemporary, urban setting and genre blending, but this does not fit comfortably into that niche. Partly this is due to the balance; this is a mystery that just happens to have a fantasy element. There is also tone; this is much closer in feel to stories of amateur detectives, such as Lord Peter Wimsey, than it is to the noir-ish PI novels that inspire most modern UF. Third, the characters; the female lead is a middle-aged bohemian, her cohort a man of great class and dignity, and the missing person is her daughter, a computer programmer. They are all unassuming and, each in their own way, quite formidable.
I have only hinted at the story and have made no mention at all of the fantasy elements; that is intentional. The less you know going in, the more it will surprise and, hopefully, delight you. This book is short, sweet, and a lot of fun. I can not recommend this highly enough.
One could call this "Urban Fantasy", given the contemporary, urban setting and genre blending, but this does not fit comfortably into that niche. Partly this is due to the balance; this is a mystery that just happens to have a fantasy element. There is also tone; this is much closer in feel to stories of amateur detectives, such as Lord Peter Wimsey, than it is to the noir-ish PI novels that inspire most modern UF. Third, the characters; the female lead is a middle-aged bohemian, her cohort a man of great class and dignity, and the missing person is her daughter, a computer programmer. They are all unassuming and, each in their own way, quite formidable.
I have only hinted at the story and have made no mention at all of the fantasy elements; that is intentional. The less you know going in, the more it will surprise and, hopefully, delight you. This book is short, sweet, and a lot of fun. I can not recommend this highly enough.
June 15, 2017
So...how would a dragon appear if he lived in a hotel in San Francisco? Enjoyable read with just enough excitement mixed with character development and an interesting concept. The writing is a bit distant--something about the author's style puts a layer of insulation between the events in the story and the reader so that emotional involvement does not happen. However, I still read the whole thing without getting bored or impatient and went on to read the next in the series.
December 22, 2016
I listened to the audible audiobook. Intriguing mystery. Good narration. Recommended.
November 29, 2018
I zipped through Tea with the Black Dragon by RA MacAvoy, which I've had on my TBR for about forever. Turns out it's more of a novella than a novel, only about 5 hours in audio.
I had fun with it. It was originally published in 1983, so before the real heyday of UF, but it definitely belongs in the UF/PNR category -- right down to the mystery and romance aspects and supernatural-things-hidden-from-the-general-populace. The computer-related elements of the story seemed remarkably primitive, even for 1983, but I guess 35 years ago really was a long time ago in terms of computer tech!
MacAvoy was big into zen IRL, and that shows here as it does in other novels of hers. We get brief discussions on the nature of reality and truth, revered Buddhist masters of the past, and so on -- and we never have any proof whether the male MC's claims are "real" or just metaphor. I would have liked to know the female MC, who was a travelling musician and a very grounded and accepting soul -- and the male MC, who ends up doing most of the detecting and derring-do (of course, sigh), was entertaining, especially in the way his low-key exterior so successfully hid what was going on underneath the facade. It was also unusual in that the female MC is over 50 with a grown daughter, and the male MC apparently about the same age.
The mystery was heavily wrapped up with computer tech, which was unfortunate since computers have progressed so far since then. And I don't quite agree with the folks who refer to this book with reverence, but it was certainly a fun read, and a slower reread might well catch more philosophical underpinnings. Oh, and MacAvoy won a Campbell and a Locus for it as a debut novel, and it was a WFA, Hugo, **and** Nebula finalist. :-) Jo Walton, , makes a good observation: "I think a great deal of the popularity and acclaim came from how lovely it is, and the rest of it came from how amazingly unusual it was in 1983 to have a fantasy novel using Chinese mythology and with a Chinese protagonist. We were parched for it and delighted with it when we got it. I can remember being excited by what seems to me today to be charming, but quite slight. We’ve come a long way."
Unfortunately, the narrator -- Megan Hayes -- was not very good. She had a lousy British accent, which was very unfortunate since the male MC was supposed to speak with a very precise one; also, her delivery sometimes misconstrued the meanings of sentences and she had some really odd word pronunciations (like pronouncing "stingy" as "sting-y"). Oh well!
I had fun with it. It was originally published in 1983, so before the real heyday of UF, but it definitely belongs in the UF/PNR category -- right down to the mystery and romance aspects and supernatural-things-hidden-from-the-general-populace. The computer-related elements of the story seemed remarkably primitive, even for 1983, but I guess 35 years ago really was a long time ago in terms of computer tech!
MacAvoy was big into zen IRL, and that shows here as it does in other novels of hers. We get brief discussions on the nature of reality and truth, revered Buddhist masters of the past, and so on -- and we never have any proof whether the male MC's claims are "real" or just metaphor. I would have liked to know the female MC, who was a travelling musician and a very grounded and accepting soul -- and the male MC, who ends up doing most of the detecting and derring-do (of course, sigh), was entertaining, especially in the way his low-key exterior so successfully hid what was going on underneath the facade. It was also unusual in that the female MC is over 50 with a grown daughter, and the male MC apparently about the same age.
The mystery was heavily wrapped up with computer tech, which was unfortunate since computers have progressed so far since then. And I don't quite agree with the folks who refer to this book with reverence, but it was certainly a fun read, and a slower reread might well catch more philosophical underpinnings. Oh, and MacAvoy won a Campbell and a Locus for it as a debut novel, and it was a WFA, Hugo, **and** Nebula finalist. :-) Jo Walton, , makes a good observation: "I think a great deal of the popularity and acclaim came from how lovely it is, and the rest of it came from how amazingly unusual it was in 1983 to have a fantasy novel using Chinese mythology and with a Chinese protagonist. We were parched for it and delighted with it when we got it. I can remember being excited by what seems to me today to be charming, but quite slight. We’ve come a long way."
Unfortunately, the narrator -- Megan Hayes -- was not very good. She had a lousy British accent, which was very unfortunate since the male MC was supposed to speak with a very precise one; also, her delivery sometimes misconstrued the meanings of sentences and she had some really odd word pronunciations (like pronouncing "stingy" as "sting-y"). Oh well!
October 1, 2019
Насправді, "Чаювання з Чорним Драконом" я давно збиралася прочитати - виявилося, що це була одна з перших книжок, котрі на ГудРідз додала була у TRL. Але без чарівного пєндєля від Джо Волтон не обійшлось.
Офіційно "Чаювання" - номінант та володар кількох фантастичних премій, а ще - одне з перших американських урбан-фентезі, що базуються на китайській міфології. Як на нинішні гроші - нібито й нічого особливого, але в першій половині 1980-х історія про те, як жінка середнього віку намагається розшукати зниклу дочку-хакерку, а допомагає їй "якийсь наче китаєць" - це було несподівано для багатьох читачів. І воно й зараз читається прикольно - з поправкою на технічний антикваріат та дивну манеру авторки міняти ПОВів ледь не посеред абзацу.
"Чаювання" - це повість (за американськими мірками - роман, але що в них не роман, скажіть мені, люди добрі?), яка намагається вмістити в себе кілька жанрів і їй це здебільшого вдається, от де дивина. Це це щемкий психологічний роман (ну от, піддалася) про те, як необхідність ростити дитину самотужки зіпсувала стосунки матері з цією дитиною. Ні, це не вона забігалася і забула звертати увагу на дитя, це дитина виросла і не пробачила собі, що зруйнувала матері кар'єру. Це химерний за нинішніми життєвими стандартами виробничий роман про те, як юним айтішникам ведеться в Каліфорнії на початку 1980-х (спойлер - не так, як зараз, і читати про це було аж прям весело). Це жвавий майже детектив про те, як шукати зниклих людей, особливо, якщо вони постійно міняються місцями. Це сумовита і топографічно точна історія про залитий дощами Сан-Франциско. Це повчальна казка про те, як дракон вчиться бути людиною. І зрештою - це пронизлива історія про розуміння і порозуміння. А ще трішки про просвітлення, чай та користь від ізострічки.
Офіційно "Чаювання" - номінант та володар кількох фантастичних премій, а ще - одне з перших американських урбан-фентезі, що базуються на китайській міфології. Як на нинішні гроші - нібито й нічого особливого, але в першій половині 1980-х історія про те, як жінка середнього віку намагається розшукати зниклу дочку-хакерку, а допомагає їй "якийсь наче китаєць" - це було несподівано для багатьох читачів. І воно й зараз читається прикольно - з поправкою на технічний антикваріат та дивну манеру авторки міняти ПОВів ледь не посеред абзацу.
"Чаювання" - це повість (за американськими мірками - роман, але що в них не роман, скажіть мені, люди добрі?), яка намагається вмістити в себе кілька жанрів і їй це здебільшого вдається, от де дивина. Це це щемкий психологічний роман (ну от, піддалася) про те, як необхідність ростити дитину самотужки зіпсувала стосунки матері з цією дитиною. Ні, це не вона забігалася і забула звертати увагу на дитя, це дитина виросла і не пробачила собі, що зруйнувала матері кар'єру. Це химерний за нинішніми життєвими стандартами виробничий роман про те, як юним айтішникам ведеться в Каліфорнії на початку 1980-х (спойлер - не так, як зараз, і читати про це було аж прям весело). Це жвавий майже детектив про те, як шукати зниклих людей, особливо, якщо вони постійно міняються місцями. Це сумовита і топографічно точна історія про залитий дощами Сан-Франциско. Це повчальна казка про те, як дракон вчиться бути людиною. І зрештою - це пронизлива історія про розуміння і порозуміння. А ще трішки про просвітлення, чай та користь від ізострічки.
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