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Dragonhaven
Jake Mendoza lives at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies in Smokehill National Park. Smokehill is home to about two hundred of the few remaining draco australiensis, which is extinct in the wild. Keeping a preserve for dragons is detractors say dragons are extremely dangerous and unjustifiably expensive to keep and should be destroyed. Environmentalists and friends say there are no records of them eating humans and they are a unique example of specialist evolution and must be protected. But they are up to eighty feet long and breathe fire. On his first overnight solo trek, Jake finds a dragon?a dragon dying next to the human she killed. Jake realizes this news could destroy Smokehill? even though the dead man is clearly a poacher who had attacked the dragon first, that fact will be lost in the outcry against dragons. But then Jake is struck by something more urgent?he sees that the dragon has just given birth, and one of the babies is still alive. What he decides to do will determine not only their futures, but the future of Smokehill itself.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published September 19, 2007
192 people are currently reading
3878 people want to read
About the author
Robin McKinley
41 books7,194 followersBorn in her mother's hometown of Warren, Ohio, Robin McKinley grew up an only child with a father in the United States Navy. She moved around frequently as a child and read copiously; she credits this background with the inspiration for her stories.
Her passion for reading was one of the most constant things in her childhood, so she began to remember events, places, and time periods by what books she read where. For example, she read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in Japan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She still uses books to keep track of her life.
McKinley attended Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine, and Dickinson College in 1970-1972. In 1975, she was graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College. In 1978, her first novel, Beauty, was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to, and she began her writing career, at age 26. At the time she was living in Brunswick, Maine. Since then she has lived in Boston, on a horse farm in Eastern Massachusetts, in New York City, in Blue Hill, Maine, and now in Hampshire, England, with her husband Peter Dickinson (also a writer, and with whom she co-wrote Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2001) and two lurchers (crossbred sighthounds).
Over the years she has worked as an editor and transcriber (1972-73), research assistant (1976-77), bookstore clerk (1978), teacher and counselor (1978-79), editorial assistant (1979-81), barn manager (1981-82), free-lance editor (1982-85), and full-time writer. Other than writing and reading books, she divides her time mainly between walking her "hellhounds," gardening, cooking, playing the piano, homeopathy, change ringing, and keeping her blog.
Her passion for reading was one of the most constant things in her childhood, so she began to remember events, places, and time periods by what books she read where. For example, she read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in Japan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She still uses books to keep track of her life.
McKinley attended Gould Academy, a preparatory school in Bethel, Maine, and Dickinson College in 1970-1972. In 1975, she was graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College. In 1978, her first novel, Beauty, was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to, and she began her writing career, at age 26. At the time she was living in Brunswick, Maine. Since then she has lived in Boston, on a horse farm in Eastern Massachusetts, in New York City, in Blue Hill, Maine, and now in Hampshire, England, with her husband Peter Dickinson (also a writer, and with whom she co-wrote Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2001) and two lurchers (crossbred sighthounds).
Over the years she has worked as an editor and transcriber (1972-73), research assistant (1976-77), bookstore clerk (1978), teacher and counselor (1978-79), editorial assistant (1979-81), barn manager (1981-82), free-lance editor (1982-85), and full-time writer. Other than writing and reading books, she divides her time mainly between walking her "hellhounds," gardening, cooking, playing the piano, homeopathy, change ringing, and keeping her blog.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 903 reviews
May 28, 2017
Dragonhaven is the book that singlehandedly demoted Robin McKinley from an auto-buy author to a "check out her book in the library first" author for me. I've had issues with a lot of her other recent novels--some of them are quite odd, and she's developed a fondness for incomprehensible, nightmarish magical scenes--but this book was the last straw that broke my devotion.
Maybe if I were 14 I'd enjoy reading a whole novel written in a 15-year-old guy's voice. Maybe. As it is, I found the writing style truly painful to read. That was my first and biggest problem with Dragonhaven, but there were other problems.
I'm not sure how McKinley--one of my favorite authors--made a story about finding intelligent dragons and raising a baby dragon so rambling and boring and near-pointless, but damn. I kept thinking it would get better and it never did.
I promptly gave the book away to Goodwill when I was done, and then I had to go back and reread The Blue Sword to get the taste of Dragonhaven out of my mouth.
Maybe if I were 14 I'd enjoy reading a whole novel written in a 15-year-old guy's voice. Maybe. As it is, I found the writing style truly painful to read. That was my first and biggest problem with Dragonhaven, but there were other problems.
I'm not sure how McKinley--one of my favorite authors--made a story about finding intelligent dragons and raising a baby dragon so rambling and boring and near-pointless, but damn. I kept thinking it would get better and it never did.
I promptly gave the book away to Goodwill when I was done, and then I had to go back and reread The Blue Sword to get the taste of Dragonhaven out of my mouth.
November 13, 2007
Wow. You never know what you are going to get with Robin McKinley. Sometimes her writing is absolutely brilliant, pulling you into a fantasy world that you wouldn't mind exchanging for your own. Her main characters, usually female, are fully realized characters who you quickly admire and care about. I admit that I have not liked all of her previous work, but I was surpised by how much I disliked this book. It is set in the present (or at least a present populated by mythical creatures) and told from the point of view of a teenage boy named Jake. I quickly tired of Jake's first person ramblings. I guess McKinley was trying to make this book seem like it was really written by a teenager and she unfortunately succeeded. I had flashbacks to reading Eragon.
One of the most frustrating parts about reading this book was that I would put it down one night and when I picked it up the next night it would take me several minutes to find my place. I am not a bookmark user, I can usually find my spot in a book because I can tell whether or not I have reached a particular point in the narrative. If I haven't read a scene I go back a few pages, if I have I go forward. It usually works. Not for this book. Jake's ramblings were so repetitive and the narrative progression so halting that I sometimes couldn't tell what pages I had already read without reading several paragraphs. I would think I had found my spot only to realize that Jake was just saying the same sort of things about how hard it is to raise a dragon every few pages and I was in the wrong spot. There is no way I can recommend this book to anyone.
One of the most frustrating parts about reading this book was that I would put it down one night and when I picked it up the next night it would take me several minutes to find my place. I am not a bookmark user, I can usually find my spot in a book because I can tell whether or not I have reached a particular point in the narrative. If I haven't read a scene I go back a few pages, if I have I go forward. It usually works. Not for this book. Jake's ramblings were so repetitive and the narrative progression so halting that I sometimes couldn't tell what pages I had already read without reading several paragraphs. I would think I had found my spot only to realize that Jake was just saying the same sort of things about how hard it is to raise a dragon every few pages and I was in the wrong spot. There is no way I can recommend this book to anyone.
December 17, 2007
blah blah blah zoo blah blah kids blah blah blah intelligent dragons blah blah whatever.
March 20, 2024
Robin McKinley does dragons again, and this time completely differently. This is the story of our world, sort of. Our world if there were dragons kept at a national park reserve. Young Jake is telling the story of how he encountered a dragon face to face (they are normally so elusive as to seem nonexistent), and how it changed his life and the world in general.
I just updated this because, several years down the road, I still think about this book all the time, and fondly. I want to reread it, I need to do that soon. I think about the premise of it a lot, and I remember little details, like what he named the dragon and why.
I just updated this because, several years down the road, I still think about this book all the time, and fondly. I want to reread it, I need to do that soon. I think about the premise of it a lot, and I remember little details, like what he named the dragon and why.
Read
April 28, 2014This book caught my eyes because it seemed McKinley's first attempt to break away from endless rewrites of Beauty and the Beast. It is a first-person narrative by Jake Mendoza, who lives at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies in Smokehill National Park. Smokehill is the millions-of-acres preserve for about two hundred of the few remaining draco australiensis, which are on the endangered list.
The story begins when Jake is fourteen, and at first the reader might assume that he's writing of very recent events. Jake reminds the reader repeatedly that the idea of a preserve for dragons is a fairly tense controversy. Some, including in the government, insist that dragons are dangerous, expensive, and should be wiped out. Environmentalists, scientists, and dragon-lovers remind everyone that there are no records of them eating humans, even though they're a hundred feet long, fly, and breathe fire.
But then a man is killed in the dragon preserve.
On his first overnight solo hike, Jake finds a dragon dying next to the human she killed. Jake realizes this news could destroy Smokehill— even though the dead man is surrounded by an arsenal of weaponry, making it clear even to Jake that he was a sport hunter who had attacked the dragon first. The fact that he was there illegally, for no good purpose, is forgotten in the resulting media feeding frenzy as the man turns out to have come from a rich, influential family--rich enough to support the habit of seeking ever more exotic creatures to hunt and kill just for sport.
So Jake and the others at Smokehill have to keep the secret of the first-ever-seen baby dragon. This is a tremendous challenge for Jake: how can you keep secret a creature whose habits are utterly alien, yet that regards you as its mom? Especially when weird things start happening inside your brain?
McKinley has build an admirable career on skillfully combining the architecture of wonder with convincing realistic detail so that the reader feels she can live inside the story. Most of her work is read and reread to pieces by her fans--my own favorite is The Blue Sword, which I happily reread.
That said, I think some readers might find Dragonhaven problematic, mostly because of the narrative voice. The immediacy, the tone, the word choices, are intended to make it seem that the protagonist is a teen--but we find out that he isn't as close to events as at first surmised by the time he writes the story.
That actually would explain why at times the voice seemed to falter: I found it odd, for example, to find a fourteen-year-old boy saying "Humans are perverse. You may have noticed." What kid of twelve to fourteen really knows what perverse is, much less defines the world that way? Or "Grace is a saint." I've never heard a boy, even a member of a religious community (which Jake isn't) using that term about an adult.
Mainly, though, the problem seems to be that so much of the story is Jake's opinion, as opposed to straight narrative. Opinion holds the other characters at a distance as well as the action; the reader has to find the story behind Jake and his thoughts on every subject.
The story, when it does take center stage, is powerful, absorbing, and exquisitely rendered. McKinley makes those dragons real. Days after putting the book down, I still half-believe those creatures are flying somewhere south of Highway 40, and if I drive enough back roads behind the great national parks, I might catch a glimpse of one.
The story begins when Jake is fourteen, and at first the reader might assume that he's writing of very recent events. Jake reminds the reader repeatedly that the idea of a preserve for dragons is a fairly tense controversy. Some, including in the government, insist that dragons are dangerous, expensive, and should be wiped out. Environmentalists, scientists, and dragon-lovers remind everyone that there are no records of them eating humans, even though they're a hundred feet long, fly, and breathe fire.
But then a man is killed in the dragon preserve.
On his first overnight solo hike, Jake finds a dragon dying next to the human she killed. Jake realizes this news could destroy Smokehill— even though the dead man is surrounded by an arsenal of weaponry, making it clear even to Jake that he was a sport hunter who had attacked the dragon first. The fact that he was there illegally, for no good purpose, is forgotten in the resulting media feeding frenzy as the man turns out to have come from a rich, influential family--rich enough to support the habit of seeking ever more exotic creatures to hunt and kill just for sport.
So Jake and the others at Smokehill have to keep the secret of the first-ever-seen baby dragon. This is a tremendous challenge for Jake: how can you keep secret a creature whose habits are utterly alien, yet that regards you as its mom? Especially when weird things start happening inside your brain?
McKinley has build an admirable career on skillfully combining the architecture of wonder with convincing realistic detail so that the reader feels she can live inside the story. Most of her work is read and reread to pieces by her fans--my own favorite is The Blue Sword, which I happily reread.
That said, I think some readers might find Dragonhaven problematic, mostly because of the narrative voice. The immediacy, the tone, the word choices, are intended to make it seem that the protagonist is a teen--but we find out that he isn't as close to events as at first surmised by the time he writes the story.
That actually would explain why at times the voice seemed to falter: I found it odd, for example, to find a fourteen-year-old boy saying "Humans are perverse. You may have noticed." What kid of twelve to fourteen really knows what perverse is, much less defines the world that way? Or "Grace is a saint." I've never heard a boy, even a member of a religious community (which Jake isn't) using that term about an adult.
Mainly, though, the problem seems to be that so much of the story is Jake's opinion, as opposed to straight narrative. Opinion holds the other characters at a distance as well as the action; the reader has to find the story behind Jake and his thoughts on every subject.
The story, when it does take center stage, is powerful, absorbing, and exquisitely rendered. McKinley makes those dragons real. Days after putting the book down, I still half-believe those creatures are flying somewhere south of Highway 40, and if I drive enough back roads behind the great national parks, I might catch a glimpse of one.
May 13, 2011
Anyone looking for a slam-bang action adventure novel will certainly be disappointed in Dragonhaven. Anyone looking for "typical" McKinley will also be disappointed, as the reviews show; unlike a lot of her books, Dragonhaven isn't a fairytale or based on one, the romance (such as it is) happens almost entirely off screen (off page?), and the main character (and narrator) is a young male.
But I think readers who come looking for the "typical" Robin McKinley novel are getting confused, and looking merely at the surface details (narration style, for instance) instead of what the novel is about, which is pure McKinley. (And let's face it: if McKinley had a formula, and every one of her novels followed it exactly, she would be John Grisham, not Robin McKinley, and her fans would not love her nearly so well.)
Dragonhaven is about a boy who adopts a baby dragon whose mother and siblings have died. It's about the excruciating trials of motherhood. It's about seeing through the responsibilities you take on, even if they're not what you expected, even when they're impossible. And it's about love, and how love can cross barriers and make understanding and communication possible--and maybe even save the world. Or at least one endangered species (and I'm not necessarily talking about the dragons!).
But I think readers who come looking for the "typical" Robin McKinley novel are getting confused, and looking merely at the surface details (narration style, for instance) instead of what the novel is about, which is pure McKinley. (And let's face it: if McKinley had a formula, and every one of her novels followed it exactly, she would be John Grisham, not Robin McKinley, and her fans would not love her nearly so well.)
Dragonhaven is about a boy who adopts a baby dragon whose mother and siblings have died. It's about the excruciating trials of motherhood. It's about seeing through the responsibilities you take on, even if they're not what you expected, even when they're impossible. And it's about love, and how love can cross barriers and make understanding and communication possible--and maybe even save the world. Or at least one endangered species (and I'm not necessarily talking about the dragons!).
February 6, 2012
OMG! This was amazing... I really enjoy reading Robin McKinley but she tends to leave you hanging at the end, as if she's going to make a sequel but then nothing ever comes of it. However this one comes full circle and ends on a beautiful note. It takes a bit to get used to since the main character Jake is trying to tell his story in his twenties about something that started happening at 14, so the writing tends to be a little jumpy. However as one of my co-workers mentioned when I explained this concept, he said, no 15 year old boy is coherent in his thoughts or otherwise. So well done Robin for getting the angle right!
But a beautiful story about coming of age, and dragons in an alternative present day.
(Add-on) So one person liked my review and mentioned that a bunch of other folks didn't care for the novel.... One person even went so far as to suggest it shouldn't be considered YA. Where else, may I ask, do you expect to put a novel about a coming of age story for a fifteen year old boy and his even younger dragonlet? And why wouldn't the narrative be jumpy and all over the place because you're reading a first-person narrative as he's trying to REMEMBER something that started almost ten years before, plus he didn't really want to write it to begin? And why, I ask, would you compare it to Robin McKinley's other novels? Newsflash: Unless the book is part of a series, IT WILL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR!!! Sheesh!
I know reviews are personal opinions and all, but it's kind of odd for folks to do such comparisons without thinking about what they're reading. Of course a narrative is going to be jumpy if the character is first person plus a fifteen year old kid. And I don't just mean that its a boy, how many "normal" fifteen year olds could write a story like that, let alone make certain it's super-coherent? What disturbs me the most is that folks who read YA tend to forget that not only is the audience YA but the characters usually are as well. Kids don't think the same as adults.
But a beautiful story about coming of age, and dragons in an alternative present day.
(Add-on) So one person liked my review and mentioned that a bunch of other folks didn't care for the novel.... One person even went so far as to suggest it shouldn't be considered YA. Where else, may I ask, do you expect to put a novel about a coming of age story for a fifteen year old boy and his even younger dragonlet? And why wouldn't the narrative be jumpy and all over the place because you're reading a first-person narrative as he's trying to REMEMBER something that started almost ten years before, plus he didn't really want to write it to begin? And why, I ask, would you compare it to Robin McKinley's other novels? Newsflash: Unless the book is part of a series, IT WILL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR!!! Sheesh!
I know reviews are personal opinions and all, but it's kind of odd for folks to do such comparisons without thinking about what they're reading. Of course a narrative is going to be jumpy if the character is first person plus a fifteen year old kid. And I don't just mean that its a boy, how many "normal" fifteen year olds could write a story like that, let alone make certain it's super-coherent? What disturbs me the most is that folks who read YA tend to forget that not only is the audience YA but the characters usually are as well. Kids don't think the same as adults.
March 9, 2008
Oh my GOSH this book took me forever. I ended up skipping most of the last quarter of the book, and I couldn't even get through the epilogue. Robin McKinley, what has happened to you? You know, from her very first book, Beauty, I noticed her writing style was interesting in that she likes to interrupt herself in the middle of sentences with tangents and side notes and random thoughts. And over the years this habit has gotten worse and worse and worse, until this book which was extremely tedious to read. It's like she's awesome at developing a character, and she'll let that character take over to express every single thought, whether it adds to the plot or not. The voice of this book was that of a 15 year old boy, and frankly, it was a pretty accurate representation, a very thorough character development, but it was just painful to read. A plot? Please? You'd think a book about a boy rescuing a baby dragon would be a pretty exciting story, right? Oh my gosh. All it was was a seriously lengthy rambling field-journalish agravating...why did I keep reading? I don't know. I kept holding out hope for the future. I guess it got interesting briefly on about page 196 when another dragon entered the scene, and I thought, oh good, the story is starting! But then it just went back to random philosophical observations that jumped all over and re-referred to themselves...ARGH. I think Robin is spending too much time alone in her own head. Sorry for the very lengthy review. I hated this book. Could you tell?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 23, 2015
This book isn't for everyone. It is told in first person by Jake, and it is almost more a book of Jake being Jake rather than being a book that actually has a plot. (Thats an exaggeration, it does have a plot, but I think you'll understand what I mean.) I remember someone (can't remember who, sorry!) describing this as "fantasy that reads like realism"--a very apt description, in my opinion. I would describe the narration as colloquial to the point of almost being stream-of-conciousness, except not really. If this sounds like it would annoy you, try one of Robin McKinleys others, which are less ramble-y. I love this book, but I completely understand how alot of people can't STAND it.
EDIT:
I'm coming back to my old review because I'm re-reading this book And I see all these other McKinley fans give this one a low rating and I want them to get it. And I'm loving this book all over again and still having this conversation in my head--"Nothing else has happened yet. Except Jake rambling. And making up new words for things. Why is this entertaining? And why do I love it so much?"
For many long-time McKinley fans, I totally get why this book is hard to swallow. Its different from her other books, significantly, in narrator, Point of View, setting, and voice. I really admire an author trying something so very different. And succeeding. Rather than your fantasy-setting third-person female-main-character carefully-worded fast(ish)-plotted McKinley book, you get... Dragonhaven. Semi-modern setting but-wait-there-are-dragons, extremely ramble-y first person narration from a teenage guy with about enough plot for a short story.
The real interesting part happens inside Jake, not outside, which is why I think many readers miss it. Speaking of coming-of-age story, this is an amazing example of one. Its about Jake growing up and figuring out what the world is like, and its not all bad but its not all good either and his seemingly romantic/exciting/interesting/whatever life is also full of more headaches than we'd like to think. Literally.
One thing McKinley does so well in all of her books is take something magical and mystical and say, well, what would that really be like? In the non-glorious day-to-day real-life version, what would it really be like? Most books seem to go from Interesting Thing to Interesting thing and leave out all the between bits. Jake thinks he is leaving out all the between bits, or at least he says he doesn't know how to put them in, but then he does almost by accident.
You don't have to love this book. But I still give it five stars.
ANOTHER EDIT:
My husband and I are re-reading this together and so I'm thinking about it even more and, well, I still love this book. I had a new thought this time that I wanted to share. One thing McKinley fans seem to not like about Dragonhaven is that it has a male main character, and they like McKinley because she does Strong Female Leads. But dig a little deeper, guys. This is about a teenage boy figuring out how difficult, and how important, it is to be a MOTHER (Jake refers to himself as Lois' mom repeatedly)--to give up your comfort and sanity and LIFE to worry about this little creature that you only sort of know how to take care of. So in the end, this book is still about HOW STRONG, GOOD, AND WONDERFUL WOMEN ARE.
EDIT:
I'm coming back to my old review because I'm re-reading this book And I see all these other McKinley fans give this one a low rating and I want them to get it. And I'm loving this book all over again and still having this conversation in my head--"Nothing else has happened yet. Except Jake rambling. And making up new words for things. Why is this entertaining? And why do I love it so much?"
For many long-time McKinley fans, I totally get why this book is hard to swallow. Its different from her other books, significantly, in narrator, Point of View, setting, and voice. I really admire an author trying something so very different. And succeeding. Rather than your fantasy-setting third-person female-main-character carefully-worded fast(ish)-plotted McKinley book, you get... Dragonhaven. Semi-modern setting but-wait-there-are-dragons, extremely ramble-y first person narration from a teenage guy with about enough plot for a short story.
The real interesting part happens inside Jake, not outside, which is why I think many readers miss it. Speaking of coming-of-age story, this is an amazing example of one. Its about Jake growing up and figuring out what the world is like, and its not all bad but its not all good either and his seemingly romantic/exciting/interesting/whatever life is also full of more headaches than we'd like to think. Literally.
One thing McKinley does so well in all of her books is take something magical and mystical and say, well, what would that really be like? In the non-glorious day-to-day real-life version, what would it really be like? Most books seem to go from Interesting Thing to Interesting thing and leave out all the between bits. Jake thinks he is leaving out all the between bits, or at least he says he doesn't know how to put them in, but then he does almost by accident.
You don't have to love this book. But I still give it five stars.
ANOTHER EDIT:
My husband and I are re-reading this together and so I'm thinking about it even more and, well, I still love this book. I had a new thought this time that I wanted to share. One thing McKinley fans seem to not like about Dragonhaven is that it has a male main character, and they like McKinley because she does Strong Female Leads. But dig a little deeper, guys. This is about a teenage boy figuring out how difficult, and how important, it is to be a MOTHER (Jake refers to himself as Lois' mom repeatedly)--to give up your comfort and sanity and LIFE to worry about this little creature that you only sort of know how to take care of. So in the end, this book is still about HOW STRONG, GOOD, AND WONDERFUL WOMEN ARE.
October 29, 2007
I didn't finish this book. I actually only got 30 pages into it. I love Robin McKinley's other books, but I got bogged down on this one. The story is told from the point of view of a fifteen year old boy, at least at the beginning. I glanced at the end and he does grow up. I could barely stand Harry Potter at 15 and I care about him. Robin just didn't make me care about this boy fast enough. Also, either Robin or just her character has real issues with "dumb" scientists and I got really sick of the generalizations about them. I am sure there are scientists out there who are only looking to make money and don't care if they do good science or not, but I never knew any like that, so I was extra bored by that. The book got good reviews, so I probably just needed to keep reading, but I have other books to read that don't require that much work.
July 11, 2025
If you are looking for another book on people riding dragons then this is not the book for you. However, if you want a very well done book on how humans and dragons learn to interact and live together then this IS the book for you. Very different and interesting read. Recommended
August 5, 2008
I have absolutely loved everything McKinley has ever written and Dragonhaven isn’t bad. It’s just in need of some serious editing.
Cons:
1) It dragged. I'll explain: A lot of readers say Sunshine dragged. I always thought they were full of crap, Sunshine had, you know, Events going on, and the segues into world or character-building were genuinely interesting and not too distracting, for me at least. In Dragonhaven the main character rambles too, but his rambles repeat quite a bit so that readers find themselves reading mostly about stuff they already knew. And then there's the whole problem of not having much actually going on in the story to break up the rambles or at least focus them.
2) Dislike the whole premise: Young boy finds dragon, wait, hasn't this been done before? Oh, yeah... it has. In fact, it's was about 25% of the YA section last time checked. Robin McKinley brought it to life in a brilliant way, however, and I guess fairy tales aren't exactly strikingly original either.
3) The 'voice' of the character changed in the novel and, no, he didn't just grow up. The first few pages of Dragonhaven are written almost painfully immaturely and then the voice sort slides into something that resembles and occasionally mirrors Sunshine except with more colloquial 'teenage boy' sayings like "that's cool'. The maturity didn't put me off, I don’t think I could have read the whole book if it was all written like the first few pages, it was just that since he’s telling the story after he’s already gone through everything and after he’s already grown shouldn’t he be speaking more maturely as well, even at first.
4) I didn’t really get a good feel for any of the characters besides Lois and Jake (the MC). The dad seemed a stereotypical widower/workaholic, Martha was Really Nice all the time and everyone else sort of drifted on the sidelines. Eleanor and Ed could have been interesting, but they rarely made appearances . This could all be explained by the fact that Jake himself was detached from everyone and so maybe he didn’t really have a good idea of who they were either.
5) The ending was just too happy and tidy. I know it’s a YA novel, but Hero had some conflict to its ending -some realism- and so did most of her other YA novels. This just seemed a bit contrived to me.
Pros:
1) Really love the descriptions of intense, sleepless motherhood being foisted on a 15-year-old boy. The detail and the emotions and just everything about it is spot-on.
2) Love the world she built, even if it wasn't quite as interesting as Sunshine's world.
3) Love some of the other descriptions and details, both of Lois and... other things (spoilers)
4) Honestly, I love some of the rambles and segues. I just wish she was backing them up with a some real-world interaction.
I'll still give it a 4, though. Because she brought the situation she tackled to life in a vivid way, even if there were some issues along the way.
Cons:
1) It dragged. I'll explain: A lot of readers say Sunshine dragged. I always thought they were full of crap, Sunshine had, you know, Events going on, and the segues into world or character-building were genuinely interesting and not too distracting, for me at least. In Dragonhaven the main character rambles too, but his rambles repeat quite a bit so that readers find themselves reading mostly about stuff they already knew. And then there's the whole problem of not having much actually going on in the story to break up the rambles or at least focus them.
2) Dislike the whole premise: Young boy finds dragon, wait, hasn't this been done before? Oh, yeah... it has. In fact, it's was about 25% of the YA section last time checked. Robin McKinley brought it to life in a brilliant way, however, and I guess fairy tales aren't exactly strikingly original either.
3) The 'voice' of the character changed in the novel and, no, he didn't just grow up. The first few pages of Dragonhaven are written almost painfully immaturely and then the voice sort slides into something that resembles and occasionally mirrors Sunshine except with more colloquial 'teenage boy' sayings like "that's cool'. The maturity didn't put me off, I don’t think I could have read the whole book if it was all written like the first few pages, it was just that since he’s telling the story after he’s already gone through everything and after he’s already grown shouldn’t he be speaking more maturely as well, even at first.
4) I didn’t really get a good feel for any of the characters besides Lois and Jake (the MC). The dad seemed a stereotypical widower/workaholic, Martha was Really Nice all the time and everyone else sort of drifted on the sidelines. Eleanor and Ed could have been interesting, but they rarely made appearances . This could all be explained by the fact that Jake himself was detached from everyone and so maybe he didn’t really have a good idea of who they were either.
5) The ending was just too happy and tidy. I know it’s a YA novel, but Hero had some conflict to its ending -some realism- and so did most of her other YA novels. This just seemed a bit contrived to me.
Pros:
1) Really love the descriptions of intense, sleepless motherhood being foisted on a 15-year-old boy. The detail and the emotions and just everything about it is spot-on.
2) Love the world she built, even if it wasn't quite as interesting as Sunshine's world.
3) Love some of the other descriptions and details, both of Lois and... other things (spoilers)
4) Honestly, I love some of the rambles and segues. I just wish she was backing them up with a some real-world interaction.
I'll still give it a 4, though. Because she brought the situation she tackled to life in a vivid way, even if there were some issues along the way.
July 2, 2016
Well that was a chore to get through. I was so excited at the prospect of a book about dragons but boy was I ever let down. It's written from the perspective of a young teenage boy who just grated on my nerves the whole way through. The whole book was extremely juvenile, quite terribly written and frankly, I'm surprised I managed to finish it.
December 3, 2007
There's a comment that I heard Joni Mitchell once say about music (specifically the songs she had written and performed). She says that no one asked Van Gogh to "paint Starry Night again, man".
With Robin McKinley's newer work, I expect it to compare to The Hero and the Crown or The Blue Sword. This book, in particular, doesn't compare very well. It's difficult to comprehend that the books are written by the same author. The story craft (supported by the well-chosen language) is not there like it has been in other books. The first person rambling narrative and disjointed slang detract from the novel as a whole.
The concept of the story is incredible, a boy raising an orphaned dragon - saving his own family and dragons in the process. I just think it could have been done so much better.
December 19, 2014
I don't know why this was already rated, as I definitely hadn't read it before this year. And also... it's not a four-star book for me. Unexpected, as it's Robin McKinley writing about the ethology of dragons but... that's just how it went, I guess.
For the record, reading this immediately after A Natural History of Dragons was largely coincidence; it just seemed to be the most interesting thing I had to hand at the time. The coincidence did give me some good perspective, though, because each of these books has about half the qualities that I expected to find in both.
Dragonhaven has:
- more dragons than ANHoD
- more actual biology
- extensive discussion of the implications of its discoveries
- a plot that was largely more interesting
However, ANHoD had:
- an actual scientific autobiography tone to its writing
- more complex characterization
- fewer problems with withholding information from the reader.
Both books, sadly, were lacking on particularly interesting in-world revelations about their dragons. Granted, my perspective is a big part of this but... if you're familiar with some of the animals currently theorized to be intelligent, and especially if you've read a lot of dragon stories, nothing in either will surprise you. It's all pretty run of the mill, and since both books are sort of built on the suspense of WHAT DID THE NARRATOR DISCOVER???, the lackluster nature of that eventual reveal is frustrating.
Honestly, though, Dragonhaven has enough redeeming qualities that I think it could have still been a higher-starred read for me if some of the technical elements of the story had been stronger. There are two things in particular that are key to Robin McKinley's writing: pacing and character voice, and both of them didn't go over too well here.
Pacing in McKinley novels is, in my experience... well, not very standard. You just sort of get used to it when you've read enough of her work. In a fairy tale-esque way, months will fly by in a page or two, or a character spends hours climbing an enchanted flight of stairs, etc. When I say it's key to her writing, I mean that less in the sense of 'it's one of her strongest skills' and more 'pacing is usually the straw that breaks the camel's back, if the rest of the book isn't strong enough'. This is why a lot of people who weren't spellbound by Pegasus hated it. This is something that comes up a lot in reviews of this book.
Character voice, on the other hand, is one of her strong suits - but in this case it pretty much loops right back around to being a weakness. See, she's writing in the voice of a teenage boy, and it's a very convincing teenage boy, but at the end of the day? 300+ pages of teenage boy voice is a lot to deal with, especially when he's prone to digressions, telling things out of order, and repeating himself. (In that respect, the book often felt a great deal more like a story told to an acquaintance than a published autobiography.) There's also the fact that Additionally, McKinley uses the autobiographical format to both foreshadow and withhold information in a way that's really frustrating - Jake will make some aside to the reader about how they already know about Thing X, because it was all over the news, pages (or even chapters) before Thing X actually occurs in the book, and it just gets annoying after a while, because you know information is being kept from you but you keep being told it isn't.
Also? The entire epilogue could go. Just - hack off that whole 50 page chunk. I am so, so sick and tired of the Babies Ever After ending, and it happened here three times in the space of a few pages, and it's just plain cheap and cloying and McKinley can do far better resolutions.
The thing is - the concept of this book is charming. I mean, 14 year old boy must secretly parent small animal no one understands? and repeatedly refers to himself as her 'mom'? That's adorable. And a lot of the baby dragon scenes were hilarious, and I was giggling to myself as I read so much my roommates kept asking questions. It just all sort of goes downhill during/after the two year timeskip, is the thing, and then the last half of the book is a long slog to a less-than-thrilling ending where everything is magically resolved (with bonus unsatisfying epilogue!).
I wanted to enjoy this a whole lot more. Really, I did.
One final note, minor spoilers and very biased by my personal interests:
OKAY NO ONE MORE THING. WHERE THE FUCK IS THE INSTITUTE EVEN LOCATED. This is a place larger than Denali National Park, apparently with Cheyenne as its nearest major city, but it's not actually IN Wyoming, because there's a comment about something stretching to Wyoming. So... Northern Nebraska? The southeast corner of South Dakota? Seriously, I don't think it would have hurt to drop a state name at least once, and not being able to figure this out bothered me through the whole book.
For the record, reading this immediately after A Natural History of Dragons was largely coincidence; it just seemed to be the most interesting thing I had to hand at the time. The coincidence did give me some good perspective, though, because each of these books has about half the qualities that I expected to find in both.
Dragonhaven has:
- more dragons than ANHoD
- more actual biology
- extensive discussion of the implications of its discoveries
- a plot that was largely more interesting
However, ANHoD had:
- an actual scientific autobiography tone to its writing
- more complex characterization
- fewer problems with withholding information from the reader.
Both books, sadly, were lacking on particularly interesting in-world revelations about their dragons. Granted, my perspective is a big part of this but... if you're familiar with some of the animals currently theorized to be intelligent, and especially if you've read a lot of dragon stories, nothing in either will surprise you. It's all pretty run of the mill, and since both books are sort of built on the suspense of WHAT DID THE NARRATOR DISCOVER???, the lackluster nature of that eventual reveal is frustrating.
Honestly, though, Dragonhaven has enough redeeming qualities that I think it could have still been a higher-starred read for me if some of the technical elements of the story had been stronger. There are two things in particular that are key to Robin McKinley's writing: pacing and character voice, and both of them didn't go over too well here.
Pacing in McKinley novels is, in my experience... well, not very standard. You just sort of get used to it when you've read enough of her work. In a fairy tale-esque way, months will fly by in a page or two, or a character spends hours climbing an enchanted flight of stairs, etc. When I say it's key to her writing, I mean that less in the sense of 'it's one of her strongest skills' and more 'pacing is usually the straw that breaks the camel's back, if the rest of the book isn't strong enough'. This is why a lot of people who weren't spellbound by Pegasus hated it. This is something that comes up a lot in reviews of this book.
Character voice, on the other hand, is one of her strong suits - but in this case it pretty much loops right back around to being a weakness. See, she's writing in the voice of a teenage boy, and it's a very convincing teenage boy, but at the end of the day? 300+ pages of teenage boy voice is a lot to deal with, especially when he's prone to digressions, telling things out of order, and repeating himself. (In that respect, the book often felt a great deal more like a story told to an acquaintance than a published autobiography.) There's also the fact that Additionally, McKinley uses the autobiographical format to both foreshadow and withhold information in a way that's really frustrating - Jake will make some aside to the reader about how they already know about Thing X, because it was all over the news, pages (or even chapters) before Thing X actually occurs in the book, and it just gets annoying after a while, because you know information is being kept from you but you keep being told it isn't.
Also? The entire epilogue could go. Just - hack off that whole 50 page chunk. I am so, so sick and tired of the Babies Ever After ending, and it happened here three times in the space of a few pages, and it's just plain cheap and cloying and McKinley can do far better resolutions.
The thing is - the concept of this book is charming. I mean, 14 year old boy must secretly parent small animal no one understands? and repeatedly refers to himself as her 'mom'? That's adorable. And a lot of the baby dragon scenes were hilarious, and I was giggling to myself as I read so much my roommates kept asking questions. It just all sort of goes downhill during/after the two year timeskip, is the thing, and then the last half of the book is a long slog to a less-than-thrilling ending where everything is magically resolved (with bonus unsatisfying epilogue!).
I wanted to enjoy this a whole lot more. Really, I did.
One final note, minor spoilers and very biased by my personal interests:
OKAY NO ONE MORE THING. WHERE THE FUCK IS THE INSTITUTE EVEN LOCATED. This is a place larger than Denali National Park, apparently with Cheyenne as its nearest major city, but it's not actually IN Wyoming, because there's a comment about something stretching to Wyoming. So... Northern Nebraska? The southeast corner of South Dakota? Seriously, I don't think it would have hurt to drop a state name at least once, and not being able to figure this out bothered me through the whole book.
Read
May 29, 2008Over Thanksgiving, I re-read "The Hero and the Crown" and was inspired to go to Robin McKinley's website to see if she had anything new coming out. When I saw that "Dragonhaven" was on the shelves I couldn't wait to get to the library.
Unfortunately, reading them so close together was a reminder of how different the style of her recent books is compared to her older ones. "Sunshine" went in this direction, with long rambly sections where you realize the action hasn't advanced for pages, but "Dragonhaven" takes it way too far. At one point I was so bored I went back and counted how many pages it had been since something actually happened (six in that particular place). I have to agree with another reviewer, the actual plot could have taken place in about twenty pages. I'm I love and respect Robin McKinley's writing, so I'm hoping she doesn't keep going in this direction.
Unfortunately, reading them so close together was a reminder of how different the style of her recent books is compared to her older ones. "Sunshine" went in this direction, with long rambly sections where you realize the action hasn't advanced for pages, but "Dragonhaven" takes it way too far. At one point I was so bored I went back and counted how many pages it had been since something actually happened (six in that particular place). I have to agree with another reviewer, the actual plot could have taken place in about twenty pages. I'm I love and respect Robin McKinley's writing, so I'm hoping she doesn't keep going in this direction.
January 15, 2008
There's almost a thud when an outstanding author writes a new book and you tear into it only to find it disappointing and inferior to previous work. The Blue Sword and Beauty are absolutely outstanding; I've re-read them repeatedly. But most of her other work doesn't even come close.
Dragonhaven is in the latter category, complete with "thud". It's creatively conceived, but the style of writing, while perhaps believable (she writes as a teen-aged boy), does not make for engaging reading. It's too drawn out, too laborious, too self-focused - perhaps realistic for what the character would really write, but NOT engaging in and of itself.
All that being said, if you're into fantasy, you might really enjoy the creative twist on its presentation.
Dragonhaven is in the latter category, complete with "thud". It's creatively conceived, but the style of writing, while perhaps believable (she writes as a teen-aged boy), does not make for engaging reading. It's too drawn out, too laborious, too self-focused - perhaps realistic for what the character would really write, but NOT engaging in and of itself.
All that being said, if you're into fantasy, you might really enjoy the creative twist on its presentation.
November 8, 2007
I can't believe I'm giving 2 stars to anything by Robin McKinley, but I was just horribly disappointed. My gripes? Well, first of all, the book's written in a very distracting stream-of-consciousness type thing, fun of phrases such as "and I was, like, scared" or things like that. Secondly, the "plot" of the book was one that would have taken about twenty pages to describe, if it wasn't for the obnoxious stream-of-consciousness style. This would have made a fun short story, but it just was NOT up to par with anything else she's ever written.
October 17, 2020
Okay, so. I love basically everything I’ve ever read by Robin McKinley, which is almost everything she’s ever written. Something about her writing style just grabs hold of my heart like a puppy with a stick, running around shaking it in its teeth and refusing to let go. She’s one of my all-time favourite authors. I have exactly no chill when it comes to Robin McKinley or any of her books.
Dragonhaven is, I think (I honestly don’t remember very well), the first book of hers I ever read, or like one of the first (upon further reflection, the first one might’ve been either Beauty or Spindle’s End, both of which, assuming I ever get my act together [HA] will be getting their own recommendations). I found it at the library one day and I was like enh, sounds cool, why not. Or, alternatively, depending where we are in my timeline, I was like, oh, I like this author and I like dragons, let’s do it.
(Sometimes my memory is so good and other times it’s just . . . not. At ALL.)
Anyway, THE POINT IS that when I first read Dragonhaven I really struggled with it, and I ended up not finishing it because I am lazy scatterbrained trash and sometimes I do that, but I went back to it later, maybe a year or so? (once again: my memory. fails. so hard sometimes) and I’m SO GLAD I did, because now it’s one of my favourite re-read comfort books of all-time. It’s funny, you know, how your opinion of a book can change so much just depending on where you are in your life and your experiences and your, like, emotional maturity and what-have-you.
(This isn’t AT ALL relevant, but this also happened to me with Little Women, except in the reverse, which is to say I liked it when I was 12 [reading it because I was stuck in the barren wasteland that is Fort MacMurray and had already read everything I’d brought to read and was a little bit very much desperate] and when I re-read it at 20 I was like UGH. ALL THE UGH. Point of fact, I don’t dislike Little Women. If life made sense, I would even like it, because it reminds me of the Laura Ingalls books, which DON’T get me started on, I started reading them as soon as I could read and I have YET to STOP. But I just find it too preachy. Too Moral Majority. [So are the Laura Ingalls books, at times, but at this point they give me a bad case of the childhood nostalgias and there’s no going back there.] I just can’t with Little Women. Sorry, Louisa May Alcott, but you literally only wrote it for the money anyway SO.)
I’m sorry, my brain follows about eight million tangents at once. I am a digresser if ever there’s been one.
I’ve read reviews of Dragonhaven by other people who are Robin McKinley die-hards, and the prevailing opinion seems to be one landing somewhere on the spectrum between meh and ugh. Which, when I step out of my teeth-baring circle of bias and go to the rational place, I can totally see why. Dragonhaven is quite different from most of her other books, which, while all diverse, all kind of have, like most artists’ work, the same kind of themes running through them. Dragonhaven stands out, the loner in the crowd who may or may not burn down the school gym. Additionally, while I would always describe Robin McKinley’s writing style as very “niche audience,” I would add that Dragonhaven might be even more niche than usual. I admit that it being hard to follow in the beginning and a little weird was one of the things that made me set it down the first time.
Like a few others of Robin McKinley’s books, Dragonhaven is set in a kind of AU reality of ours where everything, mostly, is the same except for the fact that dragons exist. It’s about this boy, Jake Mendoza, who lives in this national park in the States (they never really say where in the States, except that it’s really cold in the winter, so make of that what you will; personally I always headcanoned it in Alaska) called Smokehill at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies, a park that serves as a sanctuary, of sorts, for dragons. Human nature being what it is, dragons are extinct in the wild and now only live in a few wildlife reserves around the world, where their populations, alarmingly, are still falling. There’s a lot of ridiculous legislation about not killing dragons but also not saving dragons lives, which really complicates Jake’s (and everybody else’s) life when he encounters a mother dragon who’s been killed just after giving birth and saves her only still living dragonlet, having to basically make up how to keep her alive while also having to keep her a huge secret from everyone who isn’t part of Smokehill and most of the people who are. (Sidenote: He names her Lois, which is just FANTASTIC. Also, I just love Jake a lot. He’s such a human disaster [I mean, obviously, since he’s a teenager] and a paranoid wreck [who wouldn’t be in his situation?] and he gets lots of things wrong, but he’s trying, okay?)
The thing about most of Robin McKinley’s books is that they’re not really action-y. Most of what happens is a lot of internal monologue and narration and talking about things that happened, which is why, though I love her books like weird delightful children, I recommend them sparingly to people. Robin McKinley’s writing is a flavor that doesn’t complement every palette. If you’re looking for something with a lot of dialogue or a lot of things going down, you should probably look elsewhere, because what this book is is Jake telling us the story of Lois like he’d write it in a novel himself.
Also, I know humor is really subjective most of the time, but I find this book HILARIOUS. Like sometimes, even after reading it half a dozen times, I still have to set aside my book and have a little lie down and focus on my breathing because it’s so funny.
In the end, I think, I love this book because it’s happy. Like overwhelmingly happy. It’s interesting and Jake has such a well-defined voice and the extended cast of characters, like most of Robin McKinley’s books, is truly phenomenal (I love to death Eleanor, the hardcore seven-year-old with precocious lungs and Future President of the United States). The thought that went into developing and describing a whole new species is staggering. These are dragons like dragons have never been done before. These are dragons as they’d be in the real world, in the biological world where scientists need to have names and categories for things. I love how real-world this book feels while still being quite fantasy; it's a nice blend of genres. This book is fun, light, fluffy, delightful reading. It’s just enjoyable. For me, anyway.
And now on the excerpt part of this little thing (which is the first couple of pages because I think it gives you a good grasp of Jake’s voice):
I keep having these conversations with Dad.
I’m at my computer. He says, “What are you doing?” I mutter something, because the screen has a lot of squiggles on it so he already knows what I’m doing.
“Have you started on it yet, Jake?”
“No,” I say, probably more belligerently than I mean to. But we’ve had this conversation so often.
Dad sighs. “Jake, I know I’m nagging you. But it’s important.”
“So is the dictionary important!”
“It’s not important to anyone but you if only you can read it,” says Dad. I glare at him, because he knows that I know that he knows that it is important. But that also it’s an excuse.
“I don’t know how to write it,” I mutter. Like, just by the way, I do know how to write my dictionary. Which I don’t either. In spite of the fancy graphics package.
“That doesn’t matter. Just write it.” He tries to make a joke. “Your spelling is pretty good.”
“I don’t know how—I can’t make it a story!” I shout, or rather, I don’t shout, I sort of hiss it through clenched teeth. I want to shout. “It’s not … It doesn’t have … There’s no …” I can’t think how to finish. I can’t think how to begin.
“It doesn’t have to be a story. It doesn’t have to be anything. Just put down what happened. Don’t call it anything.”
Yeah, right. Make pizza without tomato sauce and mozzarella, just don’t call it pizza and you’ll be fine. What’s the use of pizza without tomato sauce and mozzarella? Like Alice said before she saw the White Rabbit: ‘What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?’ Although the pictures are covered really well elsewhere, and the new coffee-table, drop-it-on-your-foot-and-spend-the-rest-of-your-life-on-crutches art-book version is coming out soon. Text, I have to say, by some chucklehead sensitive type. Yuck. The thought of it is one of the things that’s getting me going here finally. The sensitive version will probably be way too much like a story. A fairy tale.
But who lives a story, you know? With chapters and things. And as a fairy-tale hero, if someone gave me a vorpal blade I’d probably stick it in my foot. Or get lost in the mimsy borogroves. Life is just one day after another, even when the days are really, really strange.
Dad looks at me. I look at him. We both know what we’re both thinking. I prod a couple of keys and make the squiggles go squigglier.
“Just do the best you can,” Dad says, really gently. “You’re the only one who can tell it at all.”
Yes. That’s the awful thundering can’t-get-around-it thing. I’m the only one who can tell you about Lois. And the only way I can tell Lois’ story is through me. I feel like starting by saying, I’m not a crazed egomaniac! Really I’m not! I’m a crazed Lois-iac. Joke. Sort of. But it’s not only the freaking hard work of trying to write it all out coherently that is stopping me now. I don’t want to go back there. I’ve got used to … like being able to look out windows again and not worry about what I might see.
Also a lot of the stuff that’s about me is stuff I don’t want to tell anyone. It’s also a lot about Dad and me, and I don’t want to tell those parts either, down on paper and everything, where he can read them. Which he will.
I may not know how to write my dictionary, but at least it’s not embarrassing.
There’s another problem (I should make a list): I don’t remember every day as every day, as different from the day before and the day after. Sure, I kept notes—I kept lots and lots of notes—but I seem to have left a lot of stuff out. All the connecting bits. All the conversations. All the sane bits, if there were any sane bits. I was just trying to stay alive, those days, keep Lois and me alive. And I wasn’t thinking in terms of needing to make a story out of it later on.
And I sure don’t remember every conversation I’ve had in the last four years. I remember a few of them—the ones that really got to me for one reason or another—but mostly, who remembers? Not me. And I bet not you either.
I don’t mean the ordinary, everyday ones you have a lot, like “How are you?” and “What’s for dinner?” (and “I thought it was your turn to cook.”) Those are easy. I mean the one-off ones. The ones why you’re trying to write something someone else is going to read at all. So that why-you’re-writing stuff is a lot of the stuff you can’t remember well enough to write.
There weren’t many conversations anyway. Not a lot of he-saids and she-saids, or at least not till the end, and then they’re peculiar.
But I’m going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I’m leaving out, because there’s still stuff I’m just not going to tell you. Get used to it.
Dragonhaven is, I think (I honestly don’t remember very well), the first book of hers I ever read, or like one of the first (upon further reflection, the first one might’ve been either Beauty or Spindle’s End, both of which, assuming I ever get my act together [HA] will be getting their own recommendations). I found it at the library one day and I was like enh, sounds cool, why not. Or, alternatively, depending where we are in my timeline, I was like, oh, I like this author and I like dragons, let’s do it.
(Sometimes my memory is so good and other times it’s just . . . not. At ALL.)
Anyway, THE POINT IS that when I first read Dragonhaven I really struggled with it, and I ended up not finishing it because I am lazy scatterbrained trash and sometimes I do that, but I went back to it later, maybe a year or so? (once again: my memory. fails. so hard sometimes) and I’m SO GLAD I did, because now it’s one of my favourite re-read comfort books of all-time. It’s funny, you know, how your opinion of a book can change so much just depending on where you are in your life and your experiences and your, like, emotional maturity and what-have-you.
(This isn’t AT ALL relevant, but this also happened to me with Little Women, except in the reverse, which is to say I liked it when I was 12 [reading it because I was stuck in the barren wasteland that is Fort MacMurray and had already read everything I’d brought to read and was a little bit very much desperate] and when I re-read it at 20 I was like UGH. ALL THE UGH. Point of fact, I don’t dislike Little Women. If life made sense, I would even like it, because it reminds me of the Laura Ingalls books, which DON’T get me started on, I started reading them as soon as I could read and I have YET to STOP. But I just find it too preachy. Too Moral Majority. [So are the Laura Ingalls books, at times, but at this point they give me a bad case of the childhood nostalgias and there’s no going back there.] I just can’t with Little Women. Sorry, Louisa May Alcott, but you literally only wrote it for the money anyway SO.)
I’m sorry, my brain follows about eight million tangents at once. I am a digresser if ever there’s been one.
I’ve read reviews of Dragonhaven by other people who are Robin McKinley die-hards, and the prevailing opinion seems to be one landing somewhere on the spectrum between meh and ugh. Which, when I step out of my teeth-baring circle of bias and go to the rational place, I can totally see why. Dragonhaven is quite different from most of her other books, which, while all diverse, all kind of have, like most artists’ work, the same kind of themes running through them. Dragonhaven stands out, the loner in the crowd who may or may not burn down the school gym. Additionally, while I would always describe Robin McKinley’s writing style as very “niche audience,” I would add that Dragonhaven might be even more niche than usual. I admit that it being hard to follow in the beginning and a little weird was one of the things that made me set it down the first time.
Like a few others of Robin McKinley’s books, Dragonhaven is set in a kind of AU reality of ours where everything, mostly, is the same except for the fact that dragons exist. It’s about this boy, Jake Mendoza, who lives in this national park in the States (they never really say where in the States, except that it’s really cold in the winter, so make of that what you will; personally I always headcanoned it in Alaska) called Smokehill at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies, a park that serves as a sanctuary, of sorts, for dragons. Human nature being what it is, dragons are extinct in the wild and now only live in a few wildlife reserves around the world, where their populations, alarmingly, are still falling. There’s a lot of ridiculous legislation about not killing dragons but also not saving dragons lives, which really complicates Jake’s (and everybody else’s) life when he encounters a mother dragon who’s been killed just after giving birth and saves her only still living dragonlet, having to basically make up how to keep her alive while also having to keep her a huge secret from everyone who isn’t part of Smokehill and most of the people who are. (Sidenote: He names her Lois, which is just FANTASTIC. Also, I just love Jake a lot. He’s such a human disaster [I mean, obviously, since he’s a teenager] and a paranoid wreck [who wouldn’t be in his situation?] and he gets lots of things wrong, but he’s trying, okay?)
The thing about most of Robin McKinley’s books is that they’re not really action-y. Most of what happens is a lot of internal monologue and narration and talking about things that happened, which is why, though I love her books like weird delightful children, I recommend them sparingly to people. Robin McKinley’s writing is a flavor that doesn’t complement every palette. If you’re looking for something with a lot of dialogue or a lot of things going down, you should probably look elsewhere, because what this book is is Jake telling us the story of Lois like he’d write it in a novel himself.
Also, I know humor is really subjective most of the time, but I find this book HILARIOUS. Like sometimes, even after reading it half a dozen times, I still have to set aside my book and have a little lie down and focus on my breathing because it’s so funny.
In the end, I think, I love this book because it’s happy. Like overwhelmingly happy. It’s interesting and Jake has such a well-defined voice and the extended cast of characters, like most of Robin McKinley’s books, is truly phenomenal (I love to death Eleanor, the hardcore seven-year-old with precocious lungs and Future President of the United States). The thought that went into developing and describing a whole new species is staggering. These are dragons like dragons have never been done before. These are dragons as they’d be in the real world, in the biological world where scientists need to have names and categories for things. I love how real-world this book feels while still being quite fantasy; it's a nice blend of genres. This book is fun, light, fluffy, delightful reading. It’s just enjoyable. For me, anyway.
And now on the excerpt part of this little thing (which is the first couple of pages because I think it gives you a good grasp of Jake’s voice):
I keep having these conversations with Dad.
I’m at my computer. He says, “What are you doing?” I mutter something, because the screen has a lot of squiggles on it so he already knows what I’m doing.
“Have you started on it yet, Jake?”
“No,” I say, probably more belligerently than I mean to. But we’ve had this conversation so often.
Dad sighs. “Jake, I know I’m nagging you. But it’s important.”
“So is the dictionary important!”
“It’s not important to anyone but you if only you can read it,” says Dad. I glare at him, because he knows that I know that he knows that it is important. But that also it’s an excuse.
“I don’t know how to write it,” I mutter. Like, just by the way, I do know how to write my dictionary. Which I don’t either. In spite of the fancy graphics package.
“That doesn’t matter. Just write it.” He tries to make a joke. “Your spelling is pretty good.”
“I don’t know how—I can’t make it a story!” I shout, or rather, I don’t shout, I sort of hiss it through clenched teeth. I want to shout. “It’s not … It doesn’t have … There’s no …” I can’t think how to finish. I can’t think how to begin.
“It doesn’t have to be a story. It doesn’t have to be anything. Just put down what happened. Don’t call it anything.”
Yeah, right. Make pizza without tomato sauce and mozzarella, just don’t call it pizza and you’ll be fine. What’s the use of pizza without tomato sauce and mozzarella? Like Alice said before she saw the White Rabbit: ‘What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?’ Although the pictures are covered really well elsewhere, and the new coffee-table, drop-it-on-your-foot-and-spend-the-rest-of-your-life-on-crutches art-book version is coming out soon. Text, I have to say, by some chucklehead sensitive type. Yuck. The thought of it is one of the things that’s getting me going here finally. The sensitive version will probably be way too much like a story. A fairy tale.
But who lives a story, you know? With chapters and things. And as a fairy-tale hero, if someone gave me a vorpal blade I’d probably stick it in my foot. Or get lost in the mimsy borogroves. Life is just one day after another, even when the days are really, really strange.
Dad looks at me. I look at him. We both know what we’re both thinking. I prod a couple of keys and make the squiggles go squigglier.
“Just do the best you can,” Dad says, really gently. “You’re the only one who can tell it at all.”
Yes. That’s the awful thundering can’t-get-around-it thing. I’m the only one who can tell you about Lois. And the only way I can tell Lois’ story is through me. I feel like starting by saying, I’m not a crazed egomaniac! Really I’m not! I’m a crazed Lois-iac. Joke. Sort of. But it’s not only the freaking hard work of trying to write it all out coherently that is stopping me now. I don’t want to go back there. I’ve got used to … like being able to look out windows again and not worry about what I might see.
Also a lot of the stuff that’s about me is stuff I don’t want to tell anyone. It’s also a lot about Dad and me, and I don’t want to tell those parts either, down on paper and everything, where he can read them. Which he will.
I may not know how to write my dictionary, but at least it’s not embarrassing.
There’s another problem (I should make a list): I don’t remember every day as every day, as different from the day before and the day after. Sure, I kept notes—I kept lots and lots of notes—but I seem to have left a lot of stuff out. All the connecting bits. All the conversations. All the sane bits, if there were any sane bits. I was just trying to stay alive, those days, keep Lois and me alive. And I wasn’t thinking in terms of needing to make a story out of it later on.
And I sure don’t remember every conversation I’ve had in the last four years. I remember a few of them—the ones that really got to me for one reason or another—but mostly, who remembers? Not me. And I bet not you either.
I don’t mean the ordinary, everyday ones you have a lot, like “How are you?” and “What’s for dinner?” (and “I thought it was your turn to cook.”) Those are easy. I mean the one-off ones. The ones why you’re trying to write something someone else is going to read at all. So that why-you’re-writing stuff is a lot of the stuff you can’t remember well enough to write.
There weren’t many conversations anyway. Not a lot of he-saids and she-saids, or at least not till the end, and then they’re peculiar.
But I’m going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I’m leaving out, because there’s still stuff I’m just not going to tell you. Get used to it.
March 10, 2013
A solid piece of entertainment. The long rambling style of the prose got grating at times but ultimately proved effective in making me believe that everything was real; that if I went and googled the Makepeace Institute I would actually find a real place to which I could travel and hope to see dragons. That kind of convincing storytelling is admirable. I particularly like the fact that McKinley managed to make a subject like dragons into such a great piece of sci-fi.
June 2, 2018
I should start by saying I love Robin McKinley, and I love most of her books. Dragonhaven is no exception, though it is one of her weirdest and so very different from anything else I've read from her so far. I almost felt like I wasn't reading McKinley at all.
I did enjoy this book, even if it is bizarre and the pacing is strange, and there are huge holes in the story. I still love Jake, and Lois, and Bud (I particularly love Bud, I want a Bud related sequel). I love the themes and the symbols and the dragon language. I keep wishing I could have grown up in Smokehill (like Eric).
I did enjoy this book, even if it is bizarre and the pacing is strange, and there are huge holes in the story. I still love Jake, and Lois, and Bud (I particularly love Bud, I want a Bud related sequel). I love the themes and the symbols and the dragon language. I keep wishing I could have grown up in Smokehill (like Eric).
July 22, 2018
Very good first-person tale of 14-year old Jake, who lives on one of the world's few dragon preserve parks, and who manages to accidentally and irrevocably change his life on his first solo trip into the park. (Dragons are originally from Australia, so think about the implications for dragon physiology. I'll wait.)
July 22, 2024
Really 3.5 stars. I found a dead bug in this library book! (rating unrelated)
June 10, 2008
I don't know, guys, I'm starting to think I don't like McKinley's first-person narrators. Will give this a fair shot though.
--
Finished it. Didn't like it. In the past I've loved McKinley's depictions of slow, not overly plotty processes of recovery or growing up, as in Deerskin or The Hero and the Crown; someone gets injured, mentally or physically, and it takes a long slow time to get better again. But it's another thing to have the character in question yammer on about how difficult and painful and frustrating the process is.
The misanthropy in this book was also very tiresome, particularly the character's rampant distrust of scientists--was this necessary? There's a plot thread of sorts about learning to communicate with dragons, but attendant on that is a lot of stuff saying it's orthodox "Good Science" to say animals don't have language but the truth is otherwise. Please. You can write a story about communicating with dragons without arguing that we're already communicating with the rest of the animal kingdom and too stubborn to admit it. Training your dog to go out is not language.
I don't know if the anti-scientific-establishment/anti-politicians/anti-civilization bias would have been so obvious if I hadn't read McKinley's blog for a while and found the same prejudices there (and the same tendency toward digressions). For that reason I can't even give her too much credit for making Jake a fully realized character, as he hews awfully closely to her own unfiltered voice.
This all makes me sad. I continue to cherish the books of Robin McKinley's that I've loved, but if she continues on the track started by Sunshine and furthered by Dragonhaven, I doubt I'll be looking for her next with much eagerness.
--
Finished it. Didn't like it. In the past I've loved McKinley's depictions of slow, not overly plotty processes of recovery or growing up, as in Deerskin or The Hero and the Crown; someone gets injured, mentally or physically, and it takes a long slow time to get better again. But it's another thing to have the character in question yammer on about how difficult and painful and frustrating the process is.
The misanthropy in this book was also very tiresome, particularly the character's rampant distrust of scientists--was this necessary? There's a plot thread of sorts about learning to communicate with dragons, but attendant on that is a lot of stuff saying it's orthodox "Good Science" to say animals don't have language but the truth is otherwise. Please. You can write a story about communicating with dragons without arguing that we're already communicating with the rest of the animal kingdom and too stubborn to admit it. Training your dog to go out is not language.
I don't know if the anti-scientific-establishment/anti-politicians/anti-civilization bias would have been so obvious if I hadn't read McKinley's blog for a while and found the same prejudices there (and the same tendency toward digressions). For that reason I can't even give her too much credit for making Jake a fully realized character, as he hews awfully closely to her own unfiltered voice.
This all makes me sad. I continue to cherish the books of Robin McKinley's that I've loved, but if she continues on the track started by Sunshine and furthered by Dragonhaven, I doubt I'll be looking for her next with much eagerness.
November 24, 2008
I'm beginning to sound like a broken record at the beginning of my YA reviews. I really enjoyed this book but will not be giving it to my daughter. If I don't think of it as YA, then I have little to complain about. It was very unique. Written from a 15 year old boy's perspective, she does a good job of making it believable (complete with slang and runon sentences). A young boy raises a baby dragon. It is interesting because it has less to do with this adventure than on the impact this has on the boy and his life and human nature in general. Dragons are an endangered species protected in a national forest but at risk from many different political influences. Her commentary on human nature as the boy struggles to understand it as well as his character development makes the book both meaningful and worthwhile. It is in no way a rehash of the popular fantasy genre. The story is engaging enough to keep you reading, the characters have depth enough to make you satisfied when you're done.
Back to my YA soap box. I won't give this to my daughter because of language and references to sexuality (hetero and otherwise). These were brief and could easily have been omitted (I would love an edited version of this book to give to her). I find the trend in YA literature that assumes that teenagers are comfortable with bad language and sexuality disturbing. There are surely plenty of these influences around them already, why add it when it is so unnecessary? If not for these elements, I would have gladly given this book a fourth star.
Back to my YA soap box. I won't give this to my daughter because of language and references to sexuality (hetero and otherwise). These were brief and could easily have been omitted (I would love an edited version of this book to give to her). I find the trend in YA literature that assumes that teenagers are comfortable with bad language and sexuality disturbing. There are surely plenty of these influences around them already, why add it when it is so unnecessary? If not for these elements, I would have gladly given this book a fourth star.
October 26, 2008
It´s a very unusual book for McKinley, even more of a take off of her usual style than Sunshine, and I can see why so many readers just did not like it. But I found it compelling and it´s so full of quirks it left me full of ideas and comments:
- "ohhh, McK wanted to do a realistic version of the Smallest DragonBoy" ( I adored that story when I was about 9. Adored..). And I love that it is about what it might *really* have been like.
- The style here is almost impressionistic, it´s a very believable voice of a flawed character, and I love how we are given another guy´s take on our narrator, another point of view and perspective. But just like looking too closely at impressionist brushstrokes seems just a blur, on a couple times Jake´s voice just seems to blur the story.
- A very strange timeline and hmm events on epilogue. Too spoilerish to explain.
I never know how to rate, numberwise books, this one is specially hard. As I said, maybe too much Jake and too much Jake being Jake at times, but the main ideas, I love how McKinley takes a different look at a favorite type of story. Lately I have been feeling bored and bored again by stories which seem all to have passed by the same cookie cutter along the production line, so it´s a relief to find something different, even if the edges are not as pretty!
- "ohhh, McK wanted to do a realistic version of the Smallest DragonBoy" ( I adored that story when I was about 9. Adored..). And I love that it is about what it might *really* have been like.
- The style here is almost impressionistic, it´s a very believable voice of a flawed character, and I love how we are given another guy´s take on our narrator, another point of view and perspective. But just like looking too closely at impressionist brushstrokes seems just a blur, on a couple times Jake´s voice just seems to blur the story.
- A very strange timeline and hmm events on epilogue. Too spoilerish to explain.
I never know how to rate, numberwise books, this one is specially hard. As I said, maybe too much Jake and too much Jake being Jake at times, but the main ideas, I love how McKinley takes a different look at a favorite type of story. Lately I have been feeling bored and bored again by stories which seem all to have passed by the same cookie cutter along the production line, so it´s a relief to find something different, even if the edges are not as pretty!
March 26, 2011
I like the ideas in this book: the concept of dragons, the way humans might respond to them if they existed as animals in our own world. And I can admire McKinley's ability to create a convincing written-by-a-teenage-boy record of that teenage boy's experiences. But what makes the voice convincing is also what makes the book so difficult to read. The teenage boy's story meanders and curls around favorite topics, hitches and snarls in half-thought reactions to events, and in attempting to express the how-do-I-write-this-amazing-thing, takes too bloody long to get to the interesting bits. Though Dragonhaven is written by one of my favorite storytellers, it reads uncomfortably like the teenage-written memoir it's pretending to be. If I'd listened to an audiobook version, I think the narrative flow would've been clearer and easier to follow, but with all the tangents---and a frustrating lack of punctuation---I had to struggle sometimes just to understand what was going on.
February 28, 2008
I wish I could give this book a higher score. Robin McKinley is one of my all-time favorite authors and I was hoping for more from this book. The story is pretty good, but I just never really got attached to the characters, and I wasn't a big fan of the writing style. It's told in first-person almost like a stream of consciousness and I just felt it was too repetitive. Like, I GET that dragons are big and that the boy has a headache. Stop already. Having the story told by teen probably didn't help me like anyone either. She wrote him pretty well, but teens aren't particularly likable and they don't really like anyone besides themselves. It was a pretty decent story, but it's not something you have to go right out there and read.
December 26, 2007
This book is supposedly written by Robin McKinley, but reads absolutely nothing like her earlier prosey work. I understand that she's writing from the first-person perspective of a character that's none-to-comfortable with the writing process, but the book is painful to read at times. The phrase "I'd've" is used more than once, and grammar goes out the window.
Aside from butchering the English language, the book starts out reading like a writer's block exercise. I plugged along because I loved Spindle's End and was sure anything by McKinley would improve, but things only deteriorated from there.
Aside from butchering the English language, the book starts out reading like a writer's block exercise. I plugged along because I loved Spindle's End and was sure anything by McKinley would improve, but things only deteriorated from there.
August 22, 2016
Good dragon story, sort of an urban fantasy story, only not. It's told (and told well) from the first-person point of view of a teenaged boy who's grown up in one of the three dragon sanctuaries in the world. The story starts a bit slowly because it takes time to set up the dragon universe and the sanctuary and the other characters, and even once things start happening, the story doesn’t race along, because it's complicated and has complicated concepts and ideas. But it's all Interesting. I liked it a lot.
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