Peter M. Last

RANTS AND RAMBLES

• • DISCLAIMER: When I review books, weaknesses and inconsistencies tend to dominate my discussion; therefore, I will emphasize that any particular rant (and, yes, they can be long-winded) does not have special bearing on my unified opinion of the book. For this, please refer to my overall star rating. Additionally, this review is my personal opinion, intended to help like-minded readers navigate the plethora of available options. Use it as a tool but do not assign undue importance to it (i.e. feel free to disagree with me).
  • The Mildest of Spoilers: It is notable that none of the characters, especially Cimorene, have much development nor change significantly. Far from immediately evident, I only realized this shortcoming while writing my review. I think what hides this omission (at least from me) is that the lack of development is expected in the fairy tale genre. Deep character arcs are not common in this arena, so their omission in this story does not feel out of place. Secondly, Cimorene is a good, likeable, and entertaining character from the start which helps hide her lack of growth. Thirdly, though she does not have any significant internal challenges to overcome, she has plenty of external obstacles. Finally, and most importantly, the story is just so fun that it is easy to gloss over its shortcomings. The book isn’t perfect, but it is very, very good.
  • Mild Spoilers: I love how this world operates under fairy tale logic and everyone simply accepts it. This gives Cimorene the ability to apply true logic time and time again. It just makes sense and never gets old. Like how she talks her way out of being killed by a jinn. Or how knights and princes feel obligated to rescue princesses from dragons, even if they dislike the danger of it, and how Cimorene has to (figurately) fend them off with a stick because she doesn’t want to be rescued. But the book does not rely too heavily on fairy tale tropes but also builds its own world of dragon politics, new spells, and absurdly cynical and smart nuance.
  • Mild Spoilers: The dialogue is wonderful. It is snappy, snarky, sarcastic, hilarious, and yet still takes itself seriously. Take this exchange between Cimorene and a stone prince. “If I were a slab of stone, I wouldn’t know about it until it was all over and I’d been turned back into a prince again.” “How do you know?” Cimorene demanded. “Have you ever been a stone slab?” The stone prince looked started. “No, I haven’t. I never thought of that.” “Well, start thinking now,” Cimorene said tartly. It’s hilarious as it questions the assumed “logic” of fairy tales yet it also teaches the universal lesson that questioning assumptions is a critical part of life. It is simply brilliant.
  • Spoilers: The third act involves Cimorene thwarting a plot by wizards to kill the king of the dragons and install a more pliable monarch. Though the major players are set up ahead of time and it is largely Cimorene’s intellect and ingenuity which drives the thwarting, the evidence used to prove the involvement of the guilty parties is acquired by one big accidental encounter which itself relies on a series of conveniences. Basically, the proof that wizards are involved in the seemingly natural death of the King of the Dragons (because for all their magic, dragons still haven’t invented criminal forensics) is that Cimorene and her friend saw a wizard gathering dragon’s bane. Fair enough, but how and why did this surprise meeting occur? Here is where the conveniences crop up. If Cimorene had not researched a fire-proofing spell, and if she had not shared it with her friend, and if her friend’s dragon wasn’t so temperamental that said friend was casting the spell 24/7 thereby running out of an ingredient integral to the casting, and if they had looked for this plant in a different direction, and if they had not decided to investigate a crack between two boulders, they would not have seen the wizard picking dragon’s bane and the dominoes would not have fallen. (As an aside, why did the dragons knowingly allow dragon’s bane to exist in their domain, even if it was in a hidden valley?) The whole conclusion of the book hinges upon this series of coincidences. It doesn’t break the book by any means, but it is still less than ideal.
  • Spoilers: At the end of the book, Woraug turns into a toad due to his un-dragon-like behavior. Is the implication that he would have turned into a toad regardless of the outcome of Cimorene’s success of failure? If so, the stakes of that endeavor are non-existent. But Woraug does not seem to have any toad-turning worries until his evil deeds are discovered, so does this toad affliction only take effect when other dragons find out about your ill-deeds? That seems like a very specific and picky magical attribute of dragons (although in a later book, there is talk of hiring a lawyer to get around the specifics of a spell, so maybe dragon attributes are just as picky and literal). On the other hand, this toad-changing did not occur until the King of the Dragons discovered the skullduggery and pointed out how un-dragon-like it was. Is this a dragon spell? If so, can all dragons do it or just the king? The logistics of this piece of the ending make my head spin.