About 150 years ago, it was discovered that dragons existed in our world. Since then, they have been the subject of a fierce political debate between those who preserve them and those who see them as dangerous. Jake, a teenage boy who lives in a dragon preserve, changes the debate when he accidentally adopts an orphaned baby dragon.

As a lover of Robin McKinley's other works, I hoped that I would also love this book. And I did. I couldn't put it down. A dense but well-told tale about a strange type of parental love. Jake is unflinchingly honest about himself that it makes it difficult to NOT like him and his experiences with the dragons is completely fascinating.

There were some frustrations. The narrative isn't always tight because it is told as a "behind the scenes" type of book: the reader is assumed to have followed Jake's story through the news and so there are gaps in what the actual reader knows about the world McKinley has woven.

Overall, however, a fabulously fantastic read and recommended to everyone. ( )

This is a very well-written book - it's Robin McKinley, so it couldn't be otherwise - but it's very different from McKinley's usual offerings. It's set in present-day America, for one thing, not in a remote time or place. It is an alternate reality, though, because the narrator, a young man named Jake, lives on the dragon preserve of Smokehill. In this world, dragons are an endangered species, and the people of Smokehill (a five-million-acre park in Wyoming) are trying to preserve and study them. Initially, Jake simply grumbles about the ignorance of tourists and the inadequacy of government funding. He also admits that hardly anyone ever sees a real dragon, and even then only from a distance. That all changes one day, though, when Jake takes a solo walk in the woods and discovers a dead human and a dying dragon who has just given birth. One of the baby dragons is still alive, and Jake unthinkingly rescues it. The rest of the book shows Jake's relationship with the dragonlet, and how that brings him into the world of dragons itself, and how the Smokehill Institute and the wider world respond to the "dragon issue." Not a lot happens in this book, which made it very slow-moving. Jake's voice was entertaining, though, and the descriptions of dragons are very McKinley-esque. I'm glad I read it, but it's definitely not my favorite by this author.

I'm a huge fan of McKinley's work, and that hasn't changed with this novel. It's the story of Jake Mendoza who finds a baby dragon next to her dying mother and the poacher that Mom killed. It's set in an alternate Earth where dragons exist and are protected in conservation areas and parks, but they're still struggling as a species, as humans are leery of 50-80 feet long fire breathing flying "monsters". The tone of the book is spot on, it's told in the first person and it sounded like how my brother talks. :) I liked the sly dig at fantastical telepathic dragon stories, as this one showed the years and pain that it took to try and get communication working between the species. McKinley's been jumping genres a bit in her last few books, and I'm intrigued to see what she does next (there are hints at another one set in this world, though it wraps up neatly at the end). My only minor quibble is when the story passes from his memories into the present day, it's a bit awkward, but it fits the tone of the story-telling. ( )

I love McKinley up, down, and sideways (I grew up on Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword and Beauty), but I had a hard time concentrating through this book. Review is spoilery, fair warning!

The idea is intensely interesting - dragons (and a few other mythical creatures, like Nessie) have been discovered in the far reaches of the earth, and a national park has been formed on a few thousand acres of land in the mountains for their preservation and study, although neither is without controversy. And Jake finds one, dying from a poacher's gun - and sweeps her baby away to raise it himself.

The plot points were fairly predictable, but no less enjoyable for that - of /course/ the dragons are intelligent, and of course they are at least somewhat telepathic, and of course at some point Jake will be swept away to their secret cave and attempt to talk to them, etc. None of that particularly bothered me, though - McKinley is a good enough writer that I don't mind predictable as long as it is also interesting.

What made it hard for me to concentrate on the book was the choice of Jake's stream-of-consciousness writing style (which, frankly, I don't buy as 17 - he's writing this book after all the events have occurred, remember - particularly if we're meant to believe he's as book-smart as he tells us he is - it reads more like a rambling 13 year old). The rambling made it hard to focus and, worse, hard to skim through parts that didn't keep your attention. If I looked away from the book, I had a hard time figuring out where I'd stopped reading to start again. I'm pretty sure I kept on keeping on solely because this is a McKinley.

The book, because it's a teenage memoir, /tells/ everything and /shows/ very little, if anything. As someone expecting McKinley's usual beautiful flair for all aspects of story-telling, including dialog and description, that was quite a let-down.

I get what she was trying to do, but I just don't think it worked all that well. I can't help but think what a neat book Dragonhaven might have been, with the concept and the characters and especially the setting (which is the one bit of the story that I thought truly shone - Smokehill is a character until itself), had she told it to us in her voice rather than Jake's.

That said, it's still better than half the stuff one stumbles across on the shelf, and you could do worse than this! ( )

I've loved Robin McKinley's writing ever since I first read The Blue Sword many years ago when it first came out. (Although I admit I haven't managed to read Sunshine yet.) I was sorry not to see anything new from her in recent years and felt a certain connection (totally one-sided of course) when I read her livejournal and discovered she has ME like me. I saw Dragonhaven reviewed by another participant in the Here be Dragons challenge and decided to try it myself. Luckily it was in at the library and I had it in time to take on holiday with me.

I'll start with a small negative and move on to what I liked. The tone of this book won't suit everyone. It is written in Jake's POV and in his voice. That means long, rambling, sometimes confusing teenage boy sentences that occasionally run on and on and on. It's a memoir really, but written by a young enough author to not yet have a great sophistication of style. That means there's a lot of description and discussion and not a lot of dialogue. It took me a chapter or two to get used to, but I found myself enjoying it once I got into the flow of it.

I liked Jake; he grew up in a certain isolation and lost his mother young and this means he has a slightly skewed vision of the world, but I like it - and him - all the same. His adventures are well described as are his reactions to them. It's all rather rambling, but everything is there and the pacing is solid. He describes himself as being rather "out of it" at the time he "adopts" the dragonet and this is also well shown within the text. He is indeed not quite in a solid headspace and probably wouldn't have done what he did if he had been, making this an important part of the story.

Ms McKinley's dragons are lovely. Well described and well realised. Lois, the dragonet Jake rescues, is totally ugly, but cute with it, and her growth and development are well followed. Jake has some rambling discourses on dragon intelligence - whether they have it and what form it might take - early in the book which sets up well his experiences when he makes contact with the adult dragons.

Happily, the dragons are intelligent, if not in the same way humans are, and Jake manages to get across their attempts to communicate without words while using words, something that is always a difficult feat.

This is not a perfect book - I didn't love it the way I do Beauty or her Damar books - but it is a good, solid read and I'm glad I decided to pick it up. I also find myself wondering if Jake's somewhat tangential storytelling comes from Ms McKinley's experience with ME (and I acknowledge I'm totally reaching here). I have real trouble with seeing the "big picture" and getting a good, linear feel of things which I attribute to my own ME and Jake's rambling memoir reminded me of what I might write if I tried to write a book (or perhaps even how these book reviews come out). Probably there's no connection at all, but the similarity did strike me.

Dragonhaven
Robin McKinley
7/10 ( )