“Dealing with Dragons” is a simply delightful young adult fantasy about a princess named Cimorene. Like all princesses, she is expected to act with a certain amount of decorum and she’s being educated in very useful things like embroidery and how to get rescued by princes, although she never can remember when she’s supposed to scream and when she’s supposed to simper. She sneaks off to various parts of the castle and learns a little bit of magic, a little bit of sword play, and the basics of cooking, but her parents find out about her clandestine education and forbid everyone in the castle to teach her anything useful at all.
The time has come for Cimorene to marry, and it is decided that she is to marry Prince Therandil. The only problem is, he’s a dope and she can’t stand the idea of being married to a dope. Seeing no way out of the situation, she decides her best course of action is to seek out a dragon and volunteer to be the dragon’s princess.
The dragons are quite taken aback – they’ve never had a princess volunteer before; they usually have to steal them. But one kind-hearted female named Kazul takes her in, and Cimorene is in her element, cooking and cleaning for the dragon, organizing the dragon’s hoard, cataloging the scrolls. She couldn’t be happier.
There is one problem, though – princes keep riding up to the cave to try to rescue her. It’s protocol, you see. She tells them she’s happy and begs them to go away, but they keep coming back. Therandil is the worst of all. As the intended husband, he feels it’s his absolute duty to rescue her, and won’t stop until she tells him about some of the other princesses being held in nearby caves. He rescues one of them, and they live happily ever after.
Meanwhile, Cimorene stumbles upon a plot cooked up by wizards who want to place one of their toadies on the dragon throne. Working with a skittish princess and a prince who is made out of stone, Cimorene thwarts the wizards and earns a true and permanent place at Kazul’s side, and there’s no place she’d rather be.
The clever and funny language of this book had me from the start, and I loved the descriptions of the dragon’s lair, the politics of the dragons, and the protocol that goes into rescuing a princess. It’s a spoof on every traditional fairy tale – an endearing, entertaining spoof that I’m sure to read again and again. It’s also book one in a series, and I will eagerly hunt down the rest of the volumes.
(This book was published in 1990 by Harcourt Brace and Company.)
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