Enchanted Forest Chronicles

[lunabee34]

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'd read and enjoyed this as a child, and it definitely holds up as an adult.

Cimorene is a fantastic character. I love the way she takes her destiny into her own hands and helps those around her to achieve their destinies. I can't wait to see what happens to her in the new role she adopts at the end of the novel.

I didn't realize it was part of a series when I was a kid, so I only read this first book in the series. I'm really looking forward to reading the next book.



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Comments

[the_rck]

Be aware-- The fourth book in the series was written and published first. It kind of constrained events in books 1-3. Book 4 got rewritten after the other three came out, but I think it was more to smooth out the prose and characterization than it was to change anything major about the plot (haven't done a point for point comparison).

Book two has a different (male) POV character. Cimorene is in it, eventually, but isn't in the first couple of chapters.

[lunabee34]

Oh, that's interesting. Now you're making me deeply curious about the fourth book. It sounds like whatever it's about is not something you like.

[the_rck]

I liked book four quite a lot in isolation. I don't like the constraints it puts on the books earlier in the timeline but written later. To compare, it's at the level of plot railroading that comes with seeing the original Star Wars trilogy before the prequels and knowing that certain big things have to happen.

[lunabee34]

Ah, okay. So book four is supposed to be a prequel then?

[the_rck]

No. It's set sixteen years after the third book. The set up for it requires certain very specific things to happen in book three. Those things felt... How to put it? Out of synch with the tone of the rest of the series, at least when they happened in the book as opposed to at some distant point in the past and to people the reader hasn't met.

[lunabee34]

Gotcha.

Now I've got to get to the library and see if they've got the third and fourth books. You've made me even more interested to see what's going to happen!