Review Time: The Last Dragon

I love a good fantasy story. Dragons, fairies, wizards, and elves: they all have a special place in my heart and have since my mother first read me The Hobbit aloud when I was ten years old. Perhaps because of my long history with all things Tolkien, I hold the fantasy genre to a fairly high standard. So I had pretty high expectations of Jane Yolen's new book, The Last Dragon, illustrated by Rebecca Guay.

The dragons have been gone from Ingeland for over two hundred years, the people have wiped them out. Or have they? In the roots of one of the great mother-trees, a long dormant dragon egg cracks and a tiny dragon emerges. Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Meddlesome, Tansy and her family gather herbs and go about the general business of being medieval. But when the dragon begins to wreak havoc on the townspeople, they must find a hero brave enough to take on the dragon and save their home. Enter Lancot, a muscular young man from across the sea who seems just the hero to rid the town of Meddlesome of their pesky dragon problem.

Here's my beef with this one: it can't seem to make up its mind about what kind of story it really is. First of all, I couldn't decide how I was supposed to feel about the actual dragons. The introduction to the story describes the history of the dragons and the way they were driven out of the lands they inhabited. Then Yolen tells us about the hatching of the Last Dragon, the way it grew and developed. But suddenly the dragon was a fearsome monster who devoured Tansy's beloved father. And yet I felt sympathetic towards the dragon. I mean, they had their homes taken away by urban sprawl. Sound familiar? That's because it's everywhere, from "Pocahontas" to "Avatar" and it's usually the ones being driven out that we sympathize with.

But it wasn't just the story line that struck me as inconsistent. The language was strange, too. On one page, Yolen uses archaic, old-fashioned language and two pages later the characters are calling things "cool." Some of the sentences ("The youngest was the one who was a trouble to her mother," p. 23) seemed strangely awkward and much more complex than necessary.

Finally, the illustrations were beautiful, they reminded me of traditional English folk tales. But the inconsistencies are pervade even there. Most of the characters are dressed in nondescript peasant garb but there are random do-rags thrown in and the hero, Lancot, is inexplicably dressed in a toga. And speaking of Lancot, I never found myself liking him at all. In his first panel, he's standing shirtless in a tavern belching. He only agrees to help the town for the money. He doesn't actually have any hero experience. In fact, it's a little like the plot for "A Bug's Life" except without the plucky sidekicks and upbeat soundtrack.

Final Grade: C-