Talking To Dragons

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Dealing with Dragons / Searching for Dragons / Calling on Dragons / Talking to Dragons [BOX SET] by Patricia C Wrede

 

Publisher: Magic Carpet Books (July 1, 2003)
ISBN-10: 0152050523

Product Description
Collected together for the first time are Patricia C. Wrede's hilarious adventure stories about Cimorene, the princess who refuses to be proper. Every one of Cimorene's adventures is included in its paperback edition--Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons.

 

Talking to Dragons by Patricia C Wrede    175 pages.

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-7-Two rules one must always remember when traveling in the Enchanted Forest: always be polite and never say yes to a favor until you know what you're being asked to do. So begins this delightful rendition of Patricia C. Wrede's Talking to Dragons (Harcourt, 1985). In book four of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, the next generation starts as Queen Cimorene sends her 16-year-old son, Daystar, into the forest with nothing but a magic sword. His mission is to help King Mendanbar escape from an evil wizard's spell. But Daystar has yet to learn that the King is his own father. As the youth wanders around, he meets Shiara, a high-strung but loveable fire-witch, and a host of new and old characters from Cimorene's past.

Well, goodness.. what's a fairytale without "happily ever after"?

Patricia C Wrede has written 4 small books to encompass one fairy tale... and it worked!

This last book happens 16 years after book 3 ends.  Wow.. I  blinked and it was 16 yrs later... just like in real life!

Daystar, who is the son of King Mendanbar and Queen Cimorene is sent on a quest to help his father.  Simple enough when thought of.  The twist is that Daystar doesn't know the King, doesn't know he is the Kings son, and doesn't even know his mother is a Queen! 

She loads him up with his father's magic sword (which he never saw before and didn't even know it was magic) and sent him off into the Enchanted Forest without telling him why he was even going there! 

Yet somehow... things happen the right way.   He meets up with a fire witch named Shiara and a nameless young dragon and as they travel together they come across some of the people from his parents past, that last of them being the King of the Dragons herself!

I have to say, as someone who is not overly fond of fairytales Patricia C Wrede certainly wrote an enjoyable one, with  characters you could like and  some you could hate.  She mixed old and new and came out "original".

There were kings and queens and princesses and dragons (oh my!).  Which lived in castles in Enchanted Forests with evil wizards abounding.  Along with "honorable mentions" of long ago fairy tales like Jack and the Bean Stalk!  How subtle it was to read how she slipped their mention into her story.

I am glad I read these four books.  Even gladder (is that a word?) that I found a (cheap) hardbound copy with the great artwork on the cover by Gary A  Lippincott.

Who could ask for more in a fairy tale??