Dealing with Dragons

Dealing with Dragons is the first book in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, though not the first book written. Patricia Wrede wrote the last book first, then came back to write a prequel, and eventually it turned into a series of four books. I never encountered it as a child, though now I wish I had.

Cimorene is a princess who'd rather not be. She's the seventh daughter, and she'd much rather do practical things like cooking and fencing than learn about etiquette and dancing. When her parents arrange her engagement to an arrogant and boring prince, she runs away from home.

Cimorene lives in a world that is very aware of fairy tale tropes. People expect stories and know how to spot the sign posts. It's not unheard of for a dragon to kidnap a princess and a prince or knight to then rescue her, winning her hand in marriage along the way. Indeed, Cimorene meets three other princesses living in the dragon caves with her. But she's the first to volunteer for this life, and the first to send her would-be rescuers packing.

This was an incredibly fun story about creating the life you want and finding people who will support that. There are some evil wizards, and Cimorene helps discover and thwart a dastardly plot. But more important, she makes friends and secures a spot for herself in the world she wants to live in. She's a practical girl, and that gets her much farther than her beauty or ability to pick out a gown (though it turns out that those etiquette lessons actually come in handy).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Crown of Swords

Image
The seventh book of the  Wheel of Time  series is where many people agree that the series takes a dive in quality. Although I think it's less that anything changes significantly and more that people get tired of how stagnant the books are becoming. Nearly nothing happens in this book. Jordan still has serious issues writing female characters and romantic relationships. The world is continuing to be expanded on, and the rules of the magic system are slowly (so slowly) becoming more clear. But this is also a step down in terms of length. We go from a few 1000 page books in a row to one that's only 850 pages (and the next is less than 700!). Combine that with my brilliant idea to read  A Tale of Two Cities  right before this book, and I positively flew through it. I think you have to reach a sort of zen state to get through this series. There are a lot of side plots, a lot of world building, a lot of descriptions of clothing. Rather than just hating certain characters, you hav
Read more

The People We Keep

This was a really sweet coming of age tale about finding your way and finding your family. Aprils' mother walked out when she was little and her father wasn't much more present. By the time she's sixteen, April is basically on her own, stuck in a small town where everyone looks down on her and even her father mostly pretends that she doesn't exist. And then she realizes that she can leave, too. So April heads out for life on the road, working odd jobs, writing and singing songs, making friends and fleeing before anyone can get too close. And through it all her music sustains her. My favorite part of this book, hands-down, was the soundtrack. April's love of music, and the way the author uses it to set the scene and drill right into her emotional state was fantastic. I kept having to put the book down so I could bring up songs on youtube and listen to them while I read certain passages. This was just an overall enjoyable book. I had a lot of sympathy for April being
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more