Book Review: Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
Princess Cimorene is the youngest of seven daughters, the first six of whom are “proper” princesses. You’d think that would mean that the kingdom of Linderwall could spare her to be a bit different. But alas, “princesses” have a defined role in life, and her square corners have to be hammered into the round hole that is proper for Cimorene. Cimorene doesn’t want to be “proper”, and her repeated attempts to try something else have convinced her parents that she should be married off to a prince or knight as soon as possible.
Prince Therandil isn’t awful, as arranged marriage matches go, but Cimorene finds him boring and she’s just not interested in getting married to anyone at the moment. She vents to a frog, who turns out to be a talking one, and once she assures it that she does, in fact, want to take action and not just whine, the frog suggests a first step towards a different fate.
As it happens, this involves becoming the princess of a dragon, Kazul, who needs someone to help out around the cave. And since being held “captive” by a dragon is traditional for princesses, Cimorene has finally found a “proper” role she can fill!
This is the first book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, a young adult fantasy series (though the fourth book in the series, Talking to Dragons, was written first.) It’s set in a world that largely runs on fairy tale logic, though not always as you’d expect if you have a narrow familiarity with the genre.
Cimorene is a strong-willed young woman who’s been partially trained in a number of useful skills in addition to her full training in “how to be a princess” (and to her surprise, the latter skillset is not as useless as she thought.) She becomes involved in dragon politics, and must deal with witches and wizards among other fantastic creatures. She also has a certain amount of common sense which comes in handy from time to time.
I found this a quick and enjoyable read.
Content note: A bird is killed in combat. A dragon dies (off-camera), and several wizards are melted (they eventually get better.) The expectations of human princesses and princes are sexist. Dragons choose their own gender when they come of age and “King of the Dragons” is a unisex term.
In the years since this book was originally published, Cimorene-like princesses have become much more common, so this might seem like a cliche to widely-read young people. Still, it’s good of its type and recommended to young fantasy fans.
