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Robin McKinley’s Dragonhaven, her first novel in four years, is a celebration of atmosphere and characterization. It’s an intensely absorbing story, but longtime fans take heed: this book has much more in common with her character-driven vampire novel Sunshine than her earlier, more conventional fantasy novels.
In McKinley’s contemporary alternative universe, dragons were discovered in Australian outback in the nineteenth century. Perceived as a threat to livestock, dragons were hunted to the point of extinction, and now survive only in a handful of wildlife preserves. Teenager Jake Mendoza, the son of two dragon biologists, has spent his entire life in one of these havens, the Smokehill National Park. Breaking a strict non-interference law, Jake saves an orphaned baby dragon… and discovers, much to his chagrin, that his new charge now views him as its mother—i.e., a round-the-clock source of food, comfort, and entertainment.
Unlike most stories featuring dragons, Dragonhaven is largely free of action and violence. Jake spends most of the book in an exhausted maternal haze, worn out by the challenges of caring for his very special-needs “daughter”. (A different kind of book critic might argue that the entire thing could be read as a treatise on teenage parenthood, but that's not the Wordcandy Way.)
While McKinley does an excellent job fleshing out her characters and her world, her attempt at creating a first-person narrative for a teenaged male is less successful. Jake uses the word “like” constantly—plausible in conversation, but this is meant to be a written narrative. Even more irritatingly, McKinley doesn’t bracket the “likes” with commas (“Her humming had like expanded.”). She’s also overly fond of British slang*—Midwestern American boys rarely use phrases like “cheesing” or “thumping great”. These gaffes don’t seriously detract from the novel’s appeal, but one does have to wonder if her editor fell asleep at the wheel.
“Likes” and Britishisms aside, Dragonhaven is an effective, creative fantasy. McKinley doesn’t publish often, but her books are always worth waiting for. She’s an outstandingly original author, and Dragonhaven is a worthy addition to her body of work.
*Totally obnoxious, seeing as she’s not even British (although she is married to an Englishman). The woman was born in Ohio, for Pete’s sake.
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