Books: Favorites: Dealing With Dragons

Hello, Dragon Riders!

Before we get started, I just want to say that this is a very exciting post for me. It is the 100th post on On the Breath of a Dragon's Wing!!!

I talked about the dragons in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles a while ago, but now I'm going to talk about the actual books. (If you want to read the post about the dragons in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, click here.) More specifically, I am going to talk about the first book, because it is my favorite.

Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede, is about a princess, Princess Cimorene, who runs away to live with a dragon. The back of the book gives us a wonderful description of Cimorene: "Meet Princess Cimorene--a princess who refuses to be proper. She is everything a princess is not supposed to be: headstrong, tomboyish, smart. . . .
And bored."

This series is such a brilliant twist on most stereotypical fairy tales. Cimorene runs away to be a dragon's princess, and many knights come to try to rescue her. The only way to get the "chivalrous" knights to go away is to be rude to them. Stepmothers help their daughters make up dramatic and horrible stories, told in almost Shakespearean language to wealthy knights and princes, hoping their daughters will marry rich. A series of boys named "Jack" steal from a nice giant couple, and the list goes on.

What's more, there's something odd going on in the realm of dragons. . .

I remember my mom read this book to me when I was tiny. I loved it, forgot about it, and read it again a few years later. I rediscovered how much I loved it, and have read it periodically ever since.

Fairy tales are the best, aren't they?

Spruce Nogard

Attributions: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/enchanted-forest-chronicles-patricia-c-wrede/1102213128?ean=9780152050528