Dragonhaven
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- ¥660
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- ¥660
Publisher Description
Think of yourself out of your comfy chair and your nice house with the roads and the streetlights outside—and the ceiling overhead low enough that a fifty-foot dragon can’t stand on her hind legs and not bump her head—and think yourself into a cavern full of dragons. Go on. Try.
Jake lives with his scientist father at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies in Smokehill National Park. Smokehill is home to about two hundred of the few remaining Draco australiensis, which is extinct in the wild.
There are five million acres of the Smokehill wilderness and the dragons rarely show themselves. Jack’s never seen one except deep in the park and at a distance. They stay away from the Institute—and the tourists. But dragon conservation is controversial. Detractors say dragons are much too dangerous and much too expensive, and should be destroyed. Supporters say there is no record of their doing anything more threatening than eating sheep, there are only a few hundred of them left at best and they must be protected.
But they are up to eighty feet long (plus tail) and breathe fire.
On Jake’s first overnight solo in the park, he meets a dragon—the thing that he would have said he wanted above everything else in the world. But this dragon is dying—dying next to the human she has killed. Jake knowns this news could destroy Smokehill. The dead man is clearly a poacher who attacked first, but that will be lost in the outcry against dragons. But then Jake notices something even more urgent: the dragon has just given birth, and one of the babies is still alive…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in a world nearly identical to our own except for the existence of Draco australiensis (gigantic, reclusive, fire-breathing dragons who raise their infants in marsupial-like pouches) this big, ambitious novel marks a departure of sorts for Newbery Medalist McKinley, whose previous works take place either in the realm of fairy tale and legend (Spindle's End) or the magical land of Damar (The Hero and the Crown). But fans will instantly recognize its protagonist, the tightly wound and solitary Jake, as classic McKinley. On his first-ever solo expedition in remotest Smokehill (the Wyoming dragon preserve and national park where he was raised), Jake stumbles across the single surviving newborn of a female dragon slaughtered by a poacher. Jake takes on the challenge of raising the orphaned creature, describing the process in minute and loving detail ("She was hopeless as a lapdog the wrong shape, and she was too thick-bodied to curl properly but she'd lie pretty contentedly on my bare feet, or behind my ankles that's when she was willing to lie down at all. She went on wanting skin , and she still spent nights lying against my stomach"). When Jake attempts to reintroduce the dragon to her own species, a brave new era of dragon-human relations begins. One quibble: because Jake tells the story as a memoir, some climactic moments tend to be relayed at arm's length. On balance, McKinley renders her imagined universe so potently that readers will wish they could book their next vacation in Smokehill. Ages 12-up.
