It’s another installment of “I picked this book up because it has a dragon on the cover.” And honestly, this method works scarily well, it nearly always gives me exactly what I want out of a fantasy series, which is primarily dragons. I didn’t realize the author wrote The Last Unicorn as well, not that I’ve read that book, but I remember the movie being scarring when I was growing up. I don’t remember it in great detail, but the vibe here is rather similar where it is both a whimsical fantasy story and there are real life consequences to actions that the characters grapple with.
The book opens with Robert, a dragon exterminator who loves dragons. He has a few a helpful pets, but he is hired to exterminate the castle of its dragons when Princess Cerise wants them gone to impress a Prince (she’d been batting them away until Prince Reginald arrives, who looks like the Platonic ideal of a Prince but doesn’t quite act like it). Robert is then accidentally hired to help Prince Reginald slay a dragon, to make him more Prince-ly in the eyes of his father so that he can marry the Princess. They get a little more than they bargain for, there’s a group of huge dragons terrorizing part of the kingdom and something like over half of the retinue dies as Cerise didn’t want to send them home.
From there, they realize that a wizard sent the dragons, and that it’s the wizard Dahl who was supposedly killed by Reginald’s father. Now that he’s back, they head to Reginald’s kingdom but get there too late, Reginald is captured and then his father is turned into a throne. On the way back Dahl tries to stop them since he recognizes Robert’s connection with the dragons and wants his power, but Robert works with the dragon sent after them to burn Dahl into ash. In the process, Robert and Cerise realize that they’re in love, and when they head back Robert tries to hide in his room but is eventually coaxed out to see Cerise. The book ends with them going to talk to Cerise’s parents and Reginald and Robert resolving to eventually free Reginald’s father.
Overall, the book is quite fun to read. I love the dragons, and the characters are a delightful mix of believable and comical. They all start out as stereotypes, and through the story become more and more humanized so you can’t help but care for them and their antics. I do wish Robert’s friends that help with his extermination got more screen time, but that’s alright.
My biggest complaint has to do with the writing style. There are points, especially towards the end where the action gets going, where aspects of the action will just be skipped over in the text and can make it hard to follow. This happens when the King is turned into a throne, there’s a part where Cerise and Robert must move in order for it to make sense, but that isn’t written anywhere. You have to pause to make sense of it all which really takes you out of it. I’m not sure if it is an error, but it happened multiple times so I suspect that it’s part of Beagle’s style. It’s quite hard to describe in advance of reading the situation, so it isn’t really a reason to not read the book, but I found it rather irritating.
The ending with Robert and Cerise getting together is also equal parts annoying and just simply expected. It’s visible from a mile away that they’re going to get together and that annoyed the shit out of me since it was just so trope-y. We could just let the dragon nerd be a dragon nerd and not marry the princess but I guess not. Again, not a reason to not read it, it was pulled off perfectly fine, but I was hoping that a fantasy story that messes with some tropes related to dragons and all might not have that ending.
I’m hoping that there’ll be a sequel eventually since one
was teased with the ending, I do like the characters enough to keep going with
them. And there’s some intriguing world building with Robert’s powers. So
despite all of the complaints above, I would still recommend this book and will
keep going with the series myself.
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