hoperu's review
3.0
The premise was fairly interesting - dragons do exist, and some of them live in a national park somewhere around North or South Dakota, boy discovers orphaned baby dragon, hijinks and danger ensue - but it is all told in first person, looking back, so there is very little actual action. Also, McKinley tried very hard to make him sound like an actual teenager, mostly by throwing in "like" a lot, which gets annoying very quickly. Not a bad book, but not one of her better ones.
ththalassocracy's review
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
bethebookworm's review
3.0
Mixed feelings on this one. I liked her ideas of Dragons, and how she in cooperated them into a (largely) unmagical paradigm. I also liked that the story really did have a happy, if rambling, ending, not just swirl of magic. However, the narration style was cluttered and at times absolutely boring, despite a potentially riveting set of plot ideas. Four stars for interesting dragons, two for bad narration, so I settled on three.
rachel_abby_reads's review
1.0
I just couldn't get into it, even when I flipped ahead to see if it was going anywhere I was interested in going. Christmas break is just too short to read a book that isn't engaging.
readerpants's review
2.0
I can't believe I'm giving two stars to a book by Robin McKinley. The Blue Sword was in my top two favorite books from 4th grade through 10th grade, and I'll read and (up until now) love absolutely anything that she writes. But this was just too... well, kind of bad. The story was told through ridiculously verbose stream-of-consciousness narration that was both confusing and a little boring. It all led up to a plot climax that was anticlimactic.
Now if this had been a seriously-pared-down version of itself, a 50-page rumination on motherhood, then I would have probably loved it.
Now if this had been a seriously-pared-down version of itself, a 50-page rumination on motherhood, then I would have probably loved it.
pnw_michelle's review
4.0
Robin McKinley is always a good choice when I don't know what to read. And I think this book proved to me once and for all that I want to read anything she writes, even if I don't think I do. Delightful as always.
bnewson's review
2.0
I liked the idea for the story behind Dragonhaven... it kept me reading. Unfortunately, there were elements that pretty much ruined the book, which I'll explain after the summary (spoilers included).
A teenage boy named Jake grows up at a remote dragon sanctuary during political upset regarding the preservation of dragons. A few years after his mother dies, he goes on his first solo overnight hike and discovers a dragon - which even the sanctuary workers rarely see in their lifetime of work - and she has been attacked by a poacher, and is about to die. To make matters worse, she has just birthed several dragonlets. Jake is emotionally connected to the tragedy of the situation because of his mother's death, as well as his love for dragons, and sees a whole range of emotion as he looks the dragon in the eye. A feeling of hope seems to glimmer in the dragon's eye, just as she dies. And that's when Jake discovers that one of the dragonlets is still alive. Without thinking, he takes the dragonlet under his care, and his whole world is turned upside down. The two of them bond, and his entire life is consumed by the constant demanding work of raising this dragonlet.
But the political unrest comes into play, and the whole situation must be kept a secret, or the sanctuary might be shut down, and the dragons exterminated. Ultimately, Jake and the dragonlet are forced to flee to a remote camp to remain hidden, and while they are cut off from other human contact, he begins to discover some sort of telepathic ability within his young dragon, and they begin some very rough communication, and start learning from each other. Things come to a head when Jake is almost killed by a dragon who discovers the two of them and is enraged by seeing the young dragonlet with a human. Crises averted, Jake also begins to bond, in a terrified-of-his-safety sort of way, with this new adult dragon. But when helicopters full of threatening military presence are heard approaching the remote camp, Jake tries to convince the adult dragon to take the dragonlet away, in to spare its discovery. Instead, both Jake and the dragonlet are whisked away, and hidden in a cave full of very large, old dragons. Jake is completely overwhelmed and terrified, but eventually begins to learn to communicate with the head dragon. And after a period of time, he again runs into military in helicopters - only this time, the result is world-wide media coverage, fame, and salvation for the sanctuary.
The story wraps up in a happy ending, the fate of the dragons seems secure, and their future interactions with humans seems promising, with new dragonlets and human babies being born at the same time, while Jake continues to learn and grow into the "telepathic" communication with the dragons. It's all an interesting story.
Unfortunately, the writing and presentation of this story was absolutely maddening. It was written in the teenage boy perspective. Unfortunately, it was written in his voice- complete with a million injunctions of "like" (it was like insane, you know?), instructions to the reader to "get over it", jumps within the story and tangents like you wouldn't believe, and notes in parenthesis like a teenage boy was actually talking to the reader, making stupid jokes or clarifying thoughts with even more maddening teenage speech. To make matters worse, the Jake's narration assumes that the reader knows the bulk of the story already because of the media coverage (all fictional, of course). It was incredibly difficult to get into the story because of this immature, unpolished teenage voice, narrating it in a very vocally stylized past-tense. I almost gave it up several times through, but I'm not one to just stop reading a book, so I kept at it.
In the end, I enjoyed the story. Unfortunately, I think it had a million times more potential with a different story-telling style. I just couldn't empathize with Jake because I had to struggle so hard just to read the story, following its jumps and turns, and wade through the voice immaturity and random immature speech injections. It seems like the story of the book would turn out a lot better in a movie than a book, with this sort of narration. Or any narration, really. But the book definitely would have been more enjoyable with a different narration style.
My bottom line is that this book was only an "okay" read. If the story had been worse, it would have been a terrible book. If the narration had been better, it would have been a wonderful book, in my opinion. As it is, I could barely manage to get through it, which is unfortunate, since I feel like it had such potential.
A teenage boy named Jake grows up at a remote dragon sanctuary during political upset regarding the preservation of dragons. A few years after his mother dies, he goes on his first solo overnight hike and discovers a dragon - which even the sanctuary workers rarely see in their lifetime of work - and she has been attacked by a poacher, and is about to die. To make matters worse, she has just birthed several dragonlets. Jake is emotionally connected to the tragedy of the situation because of his mother's death, as well as his love for dragons, and sees a whole range of emotion as he looks the dragon in the eye. A feeling of hope seems to glimmer in the dragon's eye, just as she dies. And that's when Jake discovers that one of the dragonlets is still alive. Without thinking, he takes the dragonlet under his care, and his whole world is turned upside down. The two of them bond, and his entire life is consumed by the constant demanding work of raising this dragonlet.
But the political unrest comes into play, and the whole situation must be kept a secret, or the sanctuary might be shut down, and the dragons exterminated. Ultimately, Jake and the dragonlet are forced to flee to a remote camp to remain hidden, and while they are cut off from other human contact, he begins to discover some sort of telepathic ability within his young dragon, and they begin some very rough communication, and start learning from each other. Things come to a head when Jake is almost killed by a dragon who discovers the two of them and is enraged by seeing the young dragonlet with a human. Crises averted, Jake also begins to bond, in a terrified-of-his-safety sort of way, with this new adult dragon. But when helicopters full of threatening military presence are heard approaching the remote camp, Jake tries to convince the adult dragon to take the dragonlet away, in to spare its discovery. Instead, both Jake and the dragonlet are whisked away, and hidden in a cave full of very large, old dragons. Jake is completely overwhelmed and terrified, but eventually begins to learn to communicate with the head dragon. And after a period of time, he again runs into military in helicopters - only this time, the result is world-wide media coverage, fame, and salvation for the sanctuary.
The story wraps up in a happy ending, the fate of the dragons seems secure, and their future interactions with humans seems promising, with new dragonlets and human babies being born at the same time, while Jake continues to learn and grow into the "telepathic" communication with the dragons. It's all an interesting story.
Unfortunately, the writing and presentation of this story was absolutely maddening. It was written in the teenage boy perspective. Unfortunately, it was written in his voice- complete with a million injunctions of "like" (it was like insane, you know?), instructions to the reader to "get over it", jumps within the story and tangents like you wouldn't believe, and notes in parenthesis like a teenage boy was actually talking to the reader, making stupid jokes or clarifying thoughts with even more maddening teenage speech. To make matters worse, the Jake's narration assumes that the reader knows the bulk of the story already because of the media coverage (all fictional, of course). It was incredibly difficult to get into the story because of this immature, unpolished teenage voice, narrating it in a very vocally stylized past-tense. I almost gave it up several times through, but I'm not one to just stop reading a book, so I kept at it.
In the end, I enjoyed the story. Unfortunately, I think it had a million times more potential with a different story-telling style. I just couldn't empathize with Jake because I had to struggle so hard just to read the story, following its jumps and turns, and wade through the voice immaturity and random immature speech injections. It seems like the story of the book would turn out a lot better in a movie than a book, with this sort of narration. Or any narration, really. But the book definitely would have been more enjoyable with a different narration style.
My bottom line is that this book was only an "okay" read. If the story had been worse, it would have been a terrible book. If the narration had been better, it would have been a wonderful book, in my opinion. As it is, I could barely manage to get through it, which is unfortunate, since I feel like it had such potential.
mkaber's review
1.0
One of Mckinley's worst efforts... and I mean EFFORT. You can feel the work she put into this attempt, but it just comes of as dry and irritating, the main character so annoying that you can't understand ANYONE wanting him around. I struggled with this one and nearly finished, but realized that I would rather slit my wrists than force myself through. Considering this is one of my very favorite authors, I was extremely disappointed.
kwugirl's review
3.0
I think the main thing that's fun about McKinley's books is that they generally have a pretty interesting viewpoint on pretty common tropes, like vampires or dragons or what have you. The thing that I'm a bit more lukewarm on is the way her narrators just plunge you into the different worlds, or "worlds that are sort of like ours but not quite and you'll only find out the differences in bits and pieces across the first couple hundred pages."
This particular installment in the McKinley oeuvre is written in the voice of a teenage boy who self-professedly isn't very good at writing or telling stories, which I guess is supposed to be a bit cute? But all the jumps in and out of the timeline and the second person directed at you as someone who knows the ending and is part of that other-world already, I just found it distracting and annoying. Still, I liked it overall, the epilogue goes on for ages and wraps everything up (in some threads, almost too neatly...), whereas the other McKinley books I've read tend to end more ambiguously, not something I'm a huge fan of. Though this does still have the "The Bad Guy is a bad guy because he's The Bad Guy" thing.
This particular installment in the McKinley oeuvre is written in the voice of a teenage boy who self-professedly isn't very good at writing or telling stories, which I guess is supposed to be a bit cute? But all the jumps in and out of the timeline and the second person directed at you as someone who knows the ending and is part of that other-world already, I just found it distracting and annoying. Still, I liked it overall, the epilogue goes on for ages and wraps everything up (in some threads, almost too neatly...), whereas the other McKinley books I've read tend to end more ambiguously, not something I'm a huge fan of. Though this does still have the "The Bad Guy is a bad guy because he's The Bad Guy" thing.
jessalynn_librarian's review
3.0
Not my favorite McKinley - I loved the premise, and I could almost get behind the slightly frantic tone of the narrator, but he never quite came to life for me the way some of her other characters do. It’s interesting having read this shortly after Spindle’s End and seeing how they both deal with parenting - not giving birth, but taking on an infant in desperate need of help, and then raising that child/dragon.