A review by silvernfire
The Whim of the Dragon by Pamela Dean

3.0

I thought this was the best book of the trilogy, although it still frustrated me in many ways. The best way I can put is it that through the trilogy, Dean made the characters more substantial, but the Secret Country still seems threadbare. That's appropriate for a world that may have been created in a children's let's-pretend game, but by this point, we're supposed to be thinking that the Secret Country is real—and there's just not enough there to feel real. But yes, I did like that we get to know the characters better (most of them, anyway; Patrick falls by the wayside in this book). Where we once only saw the story through Ted and Laura's points-of-view, we now also see the story through Ellen and Ruth's eyes. The story's end leaves some questions unanswered and is a bit pat, but it does feel like a conclusion. Plus, there's a twist to the end that I haven't seen in other travel-to-a-magical-land books, and I appreciate originality!