Talking to Dragons

[bc:Dealing with Dragons 150739 Dealing with Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, #1) Patricia C. Wrede https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385526967s/150739.jpg 1178402] was my favorite book when I was little, however I was never able to get the sequels till I was older. I read the second book a few years ago, but I just now read this one. It's about Cimorene's son (Daystar) who goes off on a quest, but doesn't know what sort of quest he is on. I have been rating these how I think I would have if I were still a 9 year old little girl. I will admit that I uttered the phrase “Girls rule, Boys drool” a few times at that age, so while liked the book, I would have been a little disappointing that this is not about Cimorene. Plus the Shiara, a fire witch and Daystar's travel companion, was so annoying. While I am fine with authors, (especially children's authors) adding lessons and moral to the stories, the whole “always be polite” motif was a little heavy handed. Even as a little girl I think I would have gotten a little tired of it.While I didn't like this as much as I did the beginning of the series, it is still a great children's book with a fun adventure. It ended up being a nice finish to great series.Ok, so I never knew that this was actually written first. I just read some reviews and saw that the other books were actually prequels. So a some of my critique may not stand. I can see how this would work actually work well without prior knowledge of the other books. You would be learning everything at the same time Daystar is. It probably is better to be as clueless as he is about his quest. There are a lot of “surprises” that would not be surprises to anyone who has read the other books, and that would have made it more fun. However, if that is the best way for this series to be read, then this shouldn't be marketed as book # 4. Not sure if that was a publisher's decision or not, but maybe they should make it more obvious that this book was originally the first in the series.

oh hm it's wild that this was written FIRST. I'm trying to imagine the experience of reading this without already knowing the stuff from the first 3 books. I guess you'd be more in Daystar's shoes and not appreciating some of the little hints of past characters.

I also think as an adult reading this–and one who LOVES Cimorene–it's hard not to just be like “hold on, Cimorene was just single momming it up for SIXTEEN YEARS while her husband was stuck in a time stasis that sounds like it was pretty traumatizing for him?!?” And like as a child reader of course you're meant to be in Daystar's POV and that's pretty standard fairy tale stuff so it's like oh sure whatever mom but IDK I was just so struck by that!!

also kind of disappointed that Morwen married Telemain tbh...when that didn't happen at the 3rd book like I expected I thought maybe Wrede was going to zag on us and let Morwen have her happy spinster rights.

I think if Wrede wrote this now a lot of the gender stuff would play out differently butttt it is still a somewhat dissatisfying product of its time I suppose.