Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars. At first I was blown away by how different it was from all the other McKinley I've read; it's modern-day instead of fairytale and the protagonist is male! I felt a bit as though I had started reading a Percy Jackson novel, which is fine in its own way, but not at all what I'd been expecting. However, as the story progressed, I noticed familiar elements: the main character spent a lot of time in a state of muzzy-headed confusion, and much of what was going on was inexplicable and not fully described, leaving a strong impression of that sense of narrow focus and confusion. McKinley does that bit oh-so/too-well on a regular basis, and I tend to think of it as her slightly-annoying-but-eerily-evocative trademark. Once I twigged on that, it occurred to me that the speech pattern actually was the same one I'd noticed over and over in McKinley's fairytales, only the language was updated a bit.
True to a good McKinley read, it did suck me into its world and make me irritated when I had to leave it to attend to the rest of the universe. I would have liked a chance to explore the world a bit more, but probably the pace would have dragged if more time had been spent in explicit exploration, and I could tell that it was a choice to drop the reader into the middle of the action and have the narrator assume a common background which doesn't really exist, slowly filling in the gaps later. The technique hooked me in as it was meant to do, but it leaves a bit of an unsatisfied itch. Cool concept for the world.
I want to hear Eleanor's story, maybe in the form of her post-presidential memoirs. I'm done with Jake.
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