“Dealing with Dragons” by Patricia Wrede

This is the first book of the Enchanted Forest chronicles, and a favorite of my partner’s when he was growing up. He started reading the books to me while I was recovering from surgery, it’s really cute. The fun side effect of this is that I have no idea how to spell the characters’ names, so go easy on me if I make a mistake while Googling.

The book follows the Princess Cimerone who gets tired of her life as an ordinary princess. She tries to learn fencing and then magic and then Latin and every time is told that this just isn’t how a princess should behave. Enough is enough though when her family tries to marry her off to some prince, she decides to take the advice of a talking frog she met and runs off. She finds a cave full of dragons, and volunteers to become a dragon’s princess.

The dragon who takes her in is Kazul, a kind dragon who likes her cooking and has her sort her vast treasure rooms. While working for Kazul, Cimerone meets a number of fascinating characters such as a witch, some wizards, and other princesses who are also working for dragons. Of course, there’s a bunch of knights who come and try to rescue her, she has to shoo them away since she does not want to be rescued.

Eventually it is revealed that the wizards are up to no good. Cimerone meets a wizard collecting dragonsbane, a plant that is poisonous to dragons. Not long after, the king of the dragons dies and the trials to pick a successor go underway. Cimerone needs the help of her friends to foil their plot and ensure that the dragon working with the wizards isn’t unfairly crowned king.

This is an extremely fun book for a fan of fantasy and fairy tales! It is clearly written for a young audience, but Cimerone is such a fun and feisty protagonist you can’t help but love following her around. There are plenty of cute references to other stories too, such as how there’s a princes school that makes mention to a student named Art who pulls a sword out of a stone. And all of the princesses are said to be airheads who are happy to be kidnapped by giants and dragons to only get rescued by their future husbands. Making these allusions and purposefully taking tropes to ridiculous conclusions only to turn them on their head is what makes the book so fun, even for older readers.

Of course I think there are also a few plot holes as a result as well. And a few things that are a little too convenient for the sake of the plot. My only major gripe is that at the end the dragon colluding with the wizards is turned into a toad. Not by a wizard or anything, it’s just because he stopped acting dragon-like. Apparently all of the dragons have this emergency biological switch where they turn into toads and it only comes up at the very end of the story? It’s a little much for me to take.

All that aside, I’m excited for the rest of the series if it continues this interesting dialogue with existing folktales and fairy tales. It’s a cute way to pass the time while recovering.