Princess Pulverizer: Grilled Cheese and Dragons

Grilled Cheese and Dragons by Nancy E. Krulik
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A spoiled brat princess hates her teacher and her Royal School of Ladylike Manners. She wants to go to Knight School instead because that looks way more fun. Her father tells her she can go to Knight School on the condition that she will first go out into the world and do eight good deeds, bringing back proof of each. This proves harder than she imagined, since honor, kindness, and sacrifice are not her strong suits, but eventually she gets an ogre to capture her so she can try and retrieve the jewels he stole and return them to their rightful owner. Along the way, she grudgingly teams up with a Knight School dropout and his dragon friend who wants to be a chef. One down, seven more good deeds to go!

I bought this book for my daughter, and it's pretty cute. I like how the self-centered princess (very) slowly begins to think of others, which bodes well for the later books in the series. I do wish Lady Frump and the ogre weren't basically caricatures of stereotypes, but perhaps they might be given depth and nuance later on in the series? I won't hold my breath on that, though.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character secondary. Very fast-paced. Good for showing that not everyone fits neatly in predetermined gender (or species) roles, and even misfits have strengths to contribute.

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Bloom of the Flower Dragon

Bloom of the Flower Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids loved this book; I was bored out of my mind and annoyed to boot. These stories are quite formulaic, which bothers my kids not a whit. I wouldn't mind so much if the formula was better--I'm really not on board with the 8-year-olds-save-the-world-completely-without-grownup-supervision concept.

In this iteration of it, Drake and Worm transport Ana and Kepri to some mountains where there are tiny dragons living in a field of flowers near a village but somehow without the villagers knowing about it. The dragon stone chose a blond boy to be the dragon master for the tiny dragon who first came to Bracken to ask for help. The "twist" this time is that the blond boy is rude to this little dragon because he's not thrilled the dragon is small, and he doesn't want to help because he's determined to go search for his missing father instead. Lovely.

A seer has predicted the imminent arrival of a monster, so the children go off to the field and figure out that Kepri can use sunshine powers to charge up the tiny dragons so they can basically hypnotize & heal the monster, which turns out to be a werewolf-type creature--i.e. a human who ate the wrong berries & morphed into a murderous beast. Most adults will be able to guess this outcome of this story.

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Chill of the Ice Dragon

Chill of the Ice Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five stars for kids, 3 stars for adults.

My children LOVE these books, and they are very fast-paced and exciting (even to me). I have a hard time not commenting on some logical fallacies & oversimplifications, not to mention the absurdity of 8-year-olds being dragon "masters" or being sent to a far-away country to battle an ice giant that bested a powerful adult wizard and save a whole kingdom that has been frozen in magical ice with zero adult supervision. BUT...as I said, this book was very fast-paced and exciting and not only kept my 7-year-old and 3 1/2-year-old riveted, but also conned me into reading the entire book in one sitting, resulting in an absurdly late bedtime. So I will go with a 4-star rating for the enthusiasm it engendered in my kids and for the attempt to have a couple of non-white secondary characters.

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Waking the Rainbow Dragon

Waking the Rainbow Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five stars for kids, 3 stars for adults.

My children LOVE these books, and they are very fast-paced and exciting (even to me). I have a hard time not commenting on some logical fallacies & oversimplifications, not to mention the absurdity of 8-year-olds being dragon "masters" or being sent to a far-away country to battle a trickster giant spider's spell and save a whole country from drought with zero adult supervision. BUT...as I said, this book was very fast-paced and exciting and kept my 7-year-old and 3 1/2-year-old riveted and really mad when I only read 4 chapters at bedtime, then begging me to read the rest the next afternoon. So I will go with a 4-star rating for the enthusiasm it engendered in my kids and for the attempt to have a couple of non-white main characters, although the series clearly isn't OwnVoices.

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Secret of the Water Dragon

Secret of the Water Dragon by Tracey West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four stars for kids, more like 3 stars for adults. My daughter loves these books, and they are very fast-paced and exciting. I have a hard time not commenting on some logical fallacies & oversimplifications, not to mention the absurdity of 8-year-olds being dragon "masters" or being sent to a far-away kingdom to battle an evil wizard's spell and rescue one boy's family with zero adult supervision. BUT...as I said, this book was very fast-paced and exciting and kept my almost-7-year-old riveted and really mad when I only read 3 or 4 chapters at bedtime. So I will go with a 4-star rating for the enthusiasm it engendered in my daughter and for the attempt to have a couple of non-white main characters, although the series clearly isn't OwnVoices.

In this volume of the series, dragon master Bo gets a threatening note telling him his family has been imprisoned by the Emperor of his kingdom and to save them Bo has to steal the Dragon Stone. The evil wizard Maldred has put a spell on the Emperor, which Bo's water dragon, Shu, must undo. Bo and the Emperor are depicted as Asian, although it's not precisely our world, so the empire in question is vaguely Chinese or Japanese or some amalgamation thereof.

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Highfire

Highfire by Eoin Colfer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I finished reading the ARC from NetGalley a couple of weeks ago, and even with that amount of time to ponder, I still am not quite sure what I thought/think of the book. It is definitely unlike anything I have ever read before! From the description, I was expecting something much less dark and violent. Yes, there is a great deal of humor, but it's not a lighthearted read. Characters die, nearly die, and lose body parts. The vast quantity of profanity starts on page one, the crude sexual references and jokes not long after.

You can't help but root for teenage (Everett) Squib Moreau, and I grew fond of Vern, the depressed curmudgeon of an ancient dragon, as time went on, too. Constable Hooke freaked me out--he's a ruthless psychopath who has been getting away with murdering people for years, beginning with his cruel zealot of a father.

On balance, I think I'm glad I read the book because it was so unusual and kept me reading to find out what would happen. But it's not one I'll re-read. I prefer my escapist fiction to be more laugh-out-loud and less dark. I'm sure other people with different reading tastes will love this, though.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is perhaps primary? Readers will need an incredibly high tolerance for bad language, sexual references, and on-screen violence. Vern is, he believes, the last of his kind--a fire-breathing dragon ("Vern" is short for "Wyvern"). The closest genre it fits into is contemporary fantasy because the story revolves around a dragon living/hiding in a swamp in a modern-day Louisiana bayou.

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Shadow Scale

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dragons loyal to the Comonot are battling those of the Old Ard who want to depose him and return to the days where humans were food. They claim exposure to humans taints dragons, making them impure and in need of having their memories excised. Seraphina, Queen Glisselda, and Prince Kiggins know they must gather allies to help them battle the dragons of the Old Ard in order to save the humans of Goredd, so the Queen sends Seraphina as her emissary to nearby kingdoms to persuade them to provide assistance. The journey has another purpose, however: Seraphina has read of a sort of mind-net that was once created to defend against dragons in a former time, and she resolves to seek out her fellow ityasaari (half dragons) to learn whether such a thing is possible today.

Things do not quite go as planned, of course, and Seraphina learns that another half-dragon, Jannoula, who has the ability to invade and take over the minds of other ityasaari, is searching for the same people Seraphina hopes to find. Jannoula plans to use the mind-net for her own purposes, although uncovering all the twists and turns in her devious plot will be a long, frustrating challenge for Seraphina. One by one, she watches her friends fall under the spell of Jannoula, unable to save them until she learns the secret of unlocking her own mind-fire.

There are so many things to adore about this book, but I think the saving grace for me was that it was so easy to immerse myself instantly in the world Hartman has created, no matter how little time I had to read--including sometimes just the couple of minutes it took to heat my lunch in the microwave. I had to be creative in order to carve out a few minutes (or a whole half an hour!) here and there when I could read, and with Shadow Scale, I could pick up right where I left off and be transported immediately into the world of the story. Rachel Hartman's world-building skills are outstanding.

My second favorite thing was the character development, particularly of Jannoula. You really got to see and feel sympathy for how she came to be so twisted, and you understood the guilt Seraphina felt for her inadvertent role in that. I also loved the variety of characters and relationships, including that they were so seamlessly woven into the fabric of the story.

I also appreciated that not everything was tied up with pretty little bows at the end. Don't get me wrong--I LOVE happy endings. In this case, though, it felt so much more real for some things to be left a little more open-ended. In a war, people are injured and die, and not just "the bad guys." This story takes place during wartime, with some battles occurring far from a traditional battlefield.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the free Advanced Reader's Copy of the ebook for this fantastic sequel to Seraphina!

For readers' advisors: setting, character, and story doorways are strong. Language, too, given the many words Hartman has invented. There is no sex, and if I recall correctly, any swearing uses made-up words or phrases. The violence is not at all graphic and mostly happens "off-screen." It's LGBT-friendly.

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Kenny and the Dragon

Kenny and the Dragon by Tony DiTerlizzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kenny Rabbit is a bookish sort of a boy. He lives on a farm with his parents, and his best friend is the town's bookseller. Then Kenny's dad spies a dragon on their farm, and Kenny learns that not everything you read in books is true, certainly not when it comes to dragons. THIS dragon loves creme brulée and hasn't ever eaten a princess. Unfortunately, the townsfolk are fearful of having a dragon in their midst, and Kenny must come up with a daring plan to save his new friend.

I absolutely fell in love with this sweet story of friendship, loyalty, bravery, and ingenuity! I can see why it won Switzerland's Prix Chronos award, which, according to Tony DiTerlizzi's website is "an inter-generational book award with the ambition to encourage people to read and to bring together generations: children at the age of 10 to 12 and elderly people together read and review five nominated books."

For readers' advisors: It's got some great vocabulary words, so it might be a bit of a stretch for some 3rd and 4th graders, but it would make a great choice for reading with an adult at bedtime.

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Seraphina

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All her life, Seraphina has had to hide the truth about herself, believing she is a monster. Still, musical talent like hers cannot remain hidden forever, so eventually she takes a risk and applies for the job of assistant music mistress to the court composer. This role brings her to the attention of the royal family, including Prince Lucian Kiggs, Captain of the Queen's Guard. Against her will, Seraphina finds herself drawn into the spotlight as she helps Kiggs uncover the truth of his uncle's murder. Her connection to her Uncle Orma, a scholarly dragon living incognito in his saarantras (human body), gives her a unique perspective, as does her connection to the other half dragon/half humans she once thought were only visions in her mental garden. Seraphina fights to protect her secrets even as she races against the clock to thwart assassination attempts on the royal family and the Ardmagar, ruler of the dragons, on the 40th anniversary of the Treaty between the Goreddi people and dragonkind.

Hartman does an outstanding job of world-building. I do wish I'd realized sooner that there is a glossary at the end of the book. The vocabulary level is quite high and includes words Hartman invented, so there were many times when I discerned the meaning of a term purely through contextual clues. Ostensibly this is a young adult (i.e. teen) fantasy novel, but adult fantasy readers should enjoy it every bit as much, if not more than teens.

I will now be impatiently awaiting the next book in the series, Dracomachia, which is scheduled to come out some time later this year (nothing more specific than "2013" so far).

For readers' advisors: setting and story doorways are primary, although character and language are not far behind. All swearing is made up (St. Masha and St. Daan!), and there is no sex or nudity, just a couple of kisses.

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The Last Dragonslayer

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange is a foundling, raised by the Sisterhood (officially "The Blessed Ladies of the Lobster") and serving out her indentured servitude as the acting manager of Kazam Mystical Arts Management, an organization of kooky wizards who do magic for hire. Magic has been steadily fading lately, however, and business is bad. And then one day there is a widespread premonition that Maltcassion, the last dragon, will be killed by the last Dragonslayer on Sunday at noon. Big Magic is coming, war is imminent...and Jennifer is right at the center of it.

Fans of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series will recognize his wacky sense of humor--just dive right in and go with it! The setting is again an alternate reality Britain, albeit a different version this time. Great fun for both teens and adults.

For readers' advisors: Setting and story doorways



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