I'm going to admit this at the outset: Robin Wayne Bailey's Dragon trilogy annoyed me.
Before I explain why, I've got to give a little background. The premise of the Dragon trilogy--comprising the books Brothers of the Dragon, Flames of the Dragon, and Triumph of the Dragon--is simple enough: after accidentally opening a portal between worlds, brothers Robert and Eric are transported from upstate New York to the fantastical world of Palenoc, where they quickly become unwitting combatants in a cataclysmic struggle between the forces of good and evil. Unsurpisingly, they are the good side's key to victory.
Sound rigidly conventional? It is. It is, moreover, cliched. Ever since Tolkein set many of the conventions of the modern fantasy genre, authors have been dutifully recycling them, with varying degrees of skill. Now, there's nothing at all wrong with being conventional. Quite to the contrary, skillyfully written conventional literature can be among the most stirring and praiseworthy. The Hobbit, Dune, and The Chronicles of Narnia all tell highly conventional stories and all are indisputably brilliant and enjoyable pieces of literature. But when convention is applied without imagination, it becomes cliche.
And that is the first of my two main criticisms of the Dragon trilogy: it is conventional without being particularly imaginative. Two unsuspecting young heroes-to-be are whisked away from their comfortable lives in New York into a world where, as the blurb on the first book, Brothers of the Dragon describes it "the powers of Light and Darkness had been locked in combat for thousands of years. A world where shimmering dragons circled and glided..." It happens that the brothers are Just The Thing this world needs to save itself from being engulfed by the Forces of Darkness. The setting is strictly the generic "medieval" standard, the bad guys are pure evil, the good guys are pure good, there are a few big battles with lots of bloodshed a dose of magic here and there, and everyone goes home happy.
Even if you can tolerate the heavy reliance on cliche, there is more here to disappoint the queer reader. The essence of my second criticism is the unsettling interalized homophobia that pervades these novels; understandable, had they been written thirty years ago, but incomprehensible for books of their time. The fact is that the Dragon trilogy is essentially the story of a gay man's quest to rescue his boyfriend from the clutches of Ultimate Evil. The manner in which this is revealed is bizarre in its obtuseness. All along, Bailey gives us vague hints that one of the brothers is a closeted homosexual. Eventually, midway through the second book, we get our first glimpse of gay supporting characters (one of whom, confusingly, is given the feminine name "Doe".) It is only very, very late in the story that we actually find out for sure that one of the brothers is gay. He conceals this throughout the entire story, and manages never to mention that the whole point of the quest he and his brother are on is to save his boyfriend. No one asks, no one tells. Imagine the weird feeling it would give The Lord of the Rings if we never really know what it is that Frodo is carrying, nor where exactly he is taking it, or why. And everyone is to weirded out--maybe even ashamed--to talk about it.
It was Bailey's prerogative to write the story this way, and maybe he had a good reason, but it doesn't come across in the novels. The Dragon trilogy was written in the mid-nineties, well after more adventurous authors, such as Samuel Delaney, Melissa Scott, and Mercedes Lackey, had published unselfconscious portrayals of gay people in speculative fiction.
A minor but notable last annoyance is the covers (over which Bailey may not have had much control). On my editions, two of the covers depict the brothers, Robert and Eric, in martial arts poses. Fair enough. But the other cover depicts a big burly warrior saving a breasty, despairing maiden from a dragon. No amount of careful design could have created a more cliched, misleading, off-putting cover. And why?
Bailey's approach to homosexuality is just too timid to recommend the Dragon trilogy based on its queer content. As they are also not especially imaginative or well-written, I wouldn't suggest you run out to buy these books, unless you're especially interested in the history of gay and lesbian science fiction and fantasy.