When it comes to dragons and books, I admit to burnout some years ago long before the era of “Have you read George RR Martin?!?!?” from other fantasy readers. Which isn’t unusual, many of us get tired of an element of a genre at some point in time. By the first season of Game of Thrones, I had zero interest still in dragons.
This lack of interest isn’t really due to any one author or book. It had just seemed that dragons had run their course in being interest. Many authors adapt from other things they read and dragons had a varied story background they could come from. You could even read about people who were dragons deep down and it only came out in battle. Sure. Fine.
The sameness for me came from when dragons were all powerful entities capable of mass destruction. They could be tamed by girls thought to be helpless sacrifices or by magical bloodlines. They were mindless killing machines or Machiavellian beasts. This and that, this and that, the pattern went on.
I actively avoided dragons.
Then came the Beagle-verse
I have a history of enjoying Peter S. Beagle’s works. I grew up watching The Last Unicorn and finally began to read his books as a teenager as our library never had them in stock and I had to hunt in second hand shops. Like many fans, I’d await each book.
But there was a period of silence and I thought perhaps I’d just be content with my other Beagle-verse books. In my own very under-explained overreaching nutshell explanation, Mr. Beagle went through some trials in recent years in regards to his estate and control of it. When things like that happen, books can become lost and writers can feel less like publishing than before.
We were all very lucky when we started to see announcements. I pre-ordered I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons and waited on pins and needles for it. When it was in my hands, it was a beautifully illustrated and designed work but how would it read?
Dragons & The Hero’s Journey
Most fantasy is written about the Hero’s Journey. It’s a standby. So doing it well takes talent and knowledge.
We open with a magical onslaught of something sinister and shadowy, massive in its threat. The energy of something going on in the background never dies. When we join with young Robert, a dragon exterminator who wishes he was a prince’s valet, we realize that there is far more to him than even he knows yet it seems so natural that at first you don’t really see it as special. You even forget it at times because you accept it as part of him. That is where talent comes in. To weave a story that at the end you go “Wait, how did you do that?” takes the knowledge of a master writer and Peter Beagle is that.
We spend time with dragons and learn both their insidious threats of the past, their pesky present, and an ominous future. We are given the traditional princess and heroic ‘give me a quest’ prince, but are also treated to a complexity in them all that many writers miss nailing down. Even minor characters are given stories that suit them without detracting from the core plot. The dragons themselves are not always at the forefront of the plot, often seen as little more than vermin by other characters, but their own personalities pop up , fleshed out by the knowledge of Robert.
The setting is traditional but eccentric, where the King isn’t overly good at his job, the Queen is eerily good at hers, and evil wizards just can’t stay dead. But the little bits and pieces where the setting has been taken and twisted, is a little less than normal, is what makes this work so well. You get dragons crawling through castles like cockroaches but they’re not just there. You find yourself in a dense wood where a princess might be herself as she sees fit, or in the mountains where dangerous beasts wait.
The Differences Make the Story
The novel follows the typical journey in many ways but its deviations is what makes it worth. Mr. Beagle’s language remains a mixture of casual and formal in an accessible way, where you think you are being told it be a storyteller in a pub and not some court minstrel trying to rhyme it all together.
How we are told the story, in all its nuances, is actually what keeps us reading. I have certain writers I cannot read because their style makes me sigh and give up. When a writer engages you repeatedly through carefully carefree treatment of tradition, without looking down on you or the characters, you want to sit there for a while.
The characters aren’t perfect, nor is the scenario they find themselves in. Their choices cost lives and sanities, and it tests them. The choices they made before, believing it was what they needed, become the structure that builds their development in the main acts and afterward. That is part of what makes a good story; consequences to choices and their playing out across the pages. The worldbuilding, which I always enjoy (see here for the blog), is another excellent work that almost stands on its own.
Recommend or Not?
I think it is clear I recommend this book because it just hit the right notes for me. I like reading the old style fantasies still; I’m tired of a lot of newer tropes already as they are fads sometimes. If I had to recommend it to specific people, I would say you should like the following:
- Oddball quirks on normally sedate characters
- Deeper meanings to actions
- The Hero who doesn’t realize it yet
- Medieval settings with a twist
I finished this book quickly but had a moment at the last few chapters of not wanting to finish it…because then it would be over. So for me that is a sign of a great book that made me like it so much I wanted more.
If you aren’t so crazy about medieval dragons and such, I also suggest giving Tamsin a try, which is more a ghost story with a twist.
On a slightly serious note
I’ve struggled to read during the past few years. Post-pandemic burnout, disenchantment with what publishers liked to put out, and writers who made it about money really put me off. I rarely finished a book no matter how hard I tried.
Peter Beagle has never failed me before and he didn’t here either. I actually finished going “I want to read more like this” by which I didn’t mean dragons. I meant I wanted more good writing that has twisty inventiveness and storytelling.
I felt less like I was being spoken to, recited at, and more like I was being invited into a story.
That’s a feeling worth chasing and appreciating for the rarity it is.