“Searching for Dragons” by Patricia Wrede

This is the sequel to Dealing with Dragons which I wrote about in this earlier post. Again, this is a book that my partner is reading to me, so I very funnily do not know how to spell most things in the book. But, it is an excellent sequel that continues to play with fairy tale tropes in entertaining ways.

The story follows Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted Forest. He finds a patch of the forest that is totally destroyed, along with some dragon scales. He takes these to the witch Morwen and she figures out that it’s the scales of one dragon and suggests he take them to the King of the Dragons, Kazul. However when Mendanbar gets there, Kazul is missing and Cimorene is about to go look for her. They figure out that the scales belong to one dragon who isn’t around anymore, and deduce that the wizards are likely behind this. They go looking for Kazul, and on the way meet up with a magician who can help them, a wicked uncle and crown prince, and a few cats. Of course the book ends with Mendanbar and Cimorene getting married, but that’s the only spoiler that I’ll give.

So the highlight of this book is finding all of the vague fairy tale allusions. There’s a dwarf who can spin straw into gold, but only for other people, and no one can guess his name so he’s become parent to many first-born children. Mendenbar and Cimorene suggest that he start a school, and spin gold as a scholarship which is very cute. The wicked uncle never thought he’d be an uncle when he joined this Wicked Society but now begrudgingly has to do something wicked. And the crown prince is in on it and really wants to go have adventures. But Mendenbar decides to send him off to the dwarf’s school, which counts as something wicked because the prince emphatically does not want to go to school. It’s things like that where the fairy tale gets upended, but it also serves the plot very nicely.

The book is clearly written for children though. Of course the villains are the same and of course they’re after the King of the Dragons again. The aspect that most bothered me though was Mendenbar and Cimorene getting married after absolutely no romantic interactions. The most intimate is Cimorene putting her hand on Mendenbar’s shoulder. Which is all fine, I get that kids aren’t looking for a huge relationship leading up to a marriage, but it goes against the first book. The first book really deconstructed the fairy tale trope of people getting married without knowing each other, and here we are falling into it!

Overall though, the book is good. It expands on the world from the first one and the change in perspective is a really nice way to do that. We are now halfway through the Enchanted Forest chronicles and I am excited to hear the rest of it!