No Such Thing As Dragons

This is a special entry in the dragon genre, I think, especially for kids. It's about a boy realizing that the terrifying creature he's afraid of is really just an animal. I think there's a line toward the end, "nod the devil's animal, but just an animal." I loved the way it dealt with that, with the old-fashioned "Christian knight going to fight an evil beast" narrative, without making the dragon really any [i]less[/i] for being an animal. It's still magnificent and strange.

All the emotions were surprisingly realistic -- the boy calling himself "selfish" because he saved someone to avoid having to live with running away, rather than because it's a noble or heroic or right thing to do. All the feelings he has were slightly unexpected show more for me, not just what you'd expect, but rang very true. I'm not sure how I feel about the situational mutism plot, I think that's a bit overdone, but it does do some work in the story, not really for Ansel's character arc but to allow him deeper observations and limit his ability to affect others, keeping the story fairly short. It's a good length for younger readers, not any longer than it needs to be, but feels really complete as a story. show less

Bedtime reading for me and the sprog. Pretty good. Engaging, nice descriptive passages, some gory bits and a childs-eye view of some more serious topics like adults making bad decisions, uncaring parents, prejudices etc. Alliterative sentences were fun but apt to trip me up when reading aloud.

Had me guessing much of the way through whether dragons were indeed real or not. Didn't entirely like the division of girls/women into "pretty" and "not pretty", although this is from male characters' point of view so guess it could be excused on that basis. The most prominent/heroic female character is not conventionally pretty but still has many other positive traits so clearly the author doesn't think that way.

This is a quick fantasy-esque read for children: Fast-paced, plenty of action and violence (in some scenes, an unexpected amount), and a nice little moral at the end of a not-so-neatly-wrapped-up ending.

It's a simple quest story, with a famous "dragon slayer", a mute young boy, a capable young female, and a fortune-seeking idiot all setting out to slay a dragon that terrorizes the mountains near a small village.

I won't say much more about the plot as I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's a fun, fast-paced, well-crafted read that'll provide an excellent source of entertainment for an hour or so one afternoon.

I got this recommended from a list of straight sword-and-sworcery fantasy novels.

There is too much of what I call "scenery porn". That's when the author spends a lot of describing the trees and the forests and the desolate wind and the chilly night air and the warm fireplace. They have long passages of what the character sees. It's so obviously filler, meant to establish mood and atmosphere. But it stops the plot dead to rights. Especially in a rural setting like this. I know what a friggin' forest looks like, ya see me?

It's unfortunate because the plot is fairly interesting. The two are shysters who go into towns which think they have a dragon bringing bad luck. Then they go and "kill it" and collect the reward. Because everyone knows show more dragons don't exist... OR DO THEY? And if you're smart you've guessed the plot by now.

It's somewhat satisfying to read, but it's also a plot I've seen many times before, and ends in no special way. That plus the scenery porn means it's entirely skippable. show less

My son is getting old enough to read middle grade novels with help. So he picked this book out at random at the library. I had previously read Reeve’s Larklight (steampunk middle grade series) and absolutely loved it, so I was interested to see what this book by him was like. It ended up being a slow book with awkward language throughout.

Brock is a man who fakes fighting dragons to make a living, he basically steals money from scared townspeople and pretends to slay their dragon. Ansel is a young boy who stopped speaking after the death of his mother, his father declared him useless and sold him to Brock. Ansel is stuck playing servant to Brock, but it’s better than life with his father. Both Brock and Ansel hear rumors of a dragon show more harassing a small village at the foot of the mountains. Brock decides to investigate and see if they can use his services, after all everyone knows dragons aren’t real so how dangerous can it be?

I thought the story started out very slow. The language throughout is a bit flowery and awkward. I was reading this with my son (who is 7) and we had to stop many many times to talk about what different and very archaic words meant. There is also a heavy Christian element to the book; characters feel like their actions are driven by God or directed by God. Anything different is seen as coming from the Devil. There is also the idea of people using other people’s fear of God for their own profit.

It was an educational experience (with all of the archaic language and the antiquated view of Christianity) and provided some interesting conversation with my son. However the whole idea of certain people using other’s people faith to manipulate them is one my son had a bit of trouble grasping, and once he did...he was a bit dismayed that people could be so cruel. There are also a lot of very graphic scenes in the novel. For example a girl is put out for human sacrifice and animals are gored and ripped to pieces.

In general the slow pacing made it hard for me to engage with the story and I thought it was fairly boring. The most interesting parts for me were the parts where they climbed the mountain and struggled to survive on it. There are some interesting survival scenarios as our characters struggle to deal with avalanches, extreme cold, and dangerous ascents.

One caveat to the above complaints is that my son, who is new to the middle grade fantasy genre, thought the story was awesome. He is more the target audience than I am, so I should put his opinion in here as well. He loved the idea of a dragon hunt and really enjoyed the dangerous things the characters encountered on the mountain. As I said we had to have a lot of discussion about the words, religious themes, and duplicity of humanity...he enjoyed those discussions as well. The book does have some humor throughout, not a lot, but enough to break the tension of some very dire scenes and we all enjoyed that as well.

Overall not my favorite Reeve book. I enjoyed the Larklight series a lot more. This book is a bit slow and the language did not flow well and sounded a bit antiquated. There are some good fight scenes, some decent humor, and we all enjoyed the treacherous journey up the mountain. However, there are a lot of more mature themes here that required a lot of discussion with my 7 year old son. That being said he loved the book, said it should have 5 stars. My husband and I disagreed and thought 3 was more appropriate. So I guess how much you like the story will depend on your reading experience and age. show less

Reeve seems to want to tell kids not to trust people; all the important adults in this story are deceitful or irresponsible, though not necessarily without some redeeming qualities. The children have to look out for themselves, which is as it should be in a children's book, of course.

Parts of the book are well written - particularly during the ascent of the mountain - but there are fleeting passages that inflict disorienting head-hopping on the reader. The view-points of all three main protagonists in less than a page is a violation of a fairly basic rule of novel writing...

It feels like Reeve can never get it absolutely right unless he's working in his Mortal Engines world.

Reeve is best known for his award-winning Mortal Engines series of SF novels, set in a future post-apocalyptic world, and for the standalone title Here Lies Arthur which won the Carnegie Medal for best children's book of the year, while his illustrations have graced many another title including several in the ever-popular Horrible Histories series for youngsters. All of which makes for a promising fantasy novella set in the High Middle Ages.

This is a charming, single-strand narrative, about a mute boy, Ansel, his master (a knight called Brock) and the search for a dragon which may or may not exist on a mountain in Germany. If there was a dragon, what would it look like? Would it exist in the traditional medieval image familiar from the show more stonework and woodwork in churches and cathedrals and in illuminated manuscripts? Or would it be more akin to our modern concept of a living prehistoric fossil, an archeopteryx, perhaps, or pteranodon?

As the story proceeds the reader is subject to conflicting expectations: are dragons the province of gullible medieval imaginings as modern scepticism presumes, or dare we entertain the thrilling notion that there may have been something in the old folktales? And what would be the response if someone was faced with a real flying monster? Reeve plays on our hopes and fears in a very subtle way; the human characters are realistically portrayed as we experience the unfolding of events through the eyes of Ansel; and Reeve's writing is both sparse and poetic in equal measure.

In the author's own comments on the book's conception he describes its genesis as a low-budget film idea, and naturally the resulting story is very visual (the accompanying line illustrations are by Reeve himself, and very evocative they are too). "I remembered reading that in the Middle Ages almost every peak in the Alps was supposed to be haunted by its own dragon. There are lots of fantasy, fairy-tale stories about dragons, but might it be possible to do a gritty, grainy, believable dragon story?" No Such Thing as Dragons largely fulfils that aim while being an easy but engaging, not to say enchanting, read.

Like any good narrative the story is grounded in some truth. There is a mountain near the Rhine called Drachenfels with a cave which traditionally sheltered the dragon killed by Siegfried, and another mountain called Knochen which, as it happens, in German, means 'bone', perhaps the germ of the idea of Ansel and Else's grisly discovery of human bones on the mountain. Such underlying details add to the strength of the tale, along with the teasing title which the reader can take as either a question or a definitive statement, according to taste.

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