A Small, Elderly Dragon

by Beverly Keller 

     Amusing little story about a kingdom with a foolish king, a smart but drab princess, and a lurking dragon on the mountain. They all get into a mess of trouble when a sorcerer is brought in to deal with the dragon (who doesn't want to fight knights or eat sacrificial victims). The sorcerer has soon ousted the king, banished the king's advisor and locked all the knights in the dungeon. It's up to the princess and a few stout young men to defeat the sorcerer, if they can only free the dragon! First he gets trapped under a landslide in his own cave, then he gets shrunk by the sorcerer and locked in a birdcage. It's funny and quirky, but events move through the scenes so fast I sometimes wondered what the heck was going on. There's secret identities and unspoken love interests (which I didn't at all see coming, so that threw me a bit at the end). I did like a lot of the wordplay, especially when characters offered other words in rapid succession when they didn't understand what someone said- made me chuckle. My favorite character was the grumpy dragon, however after his second entrapment he doesn't do much. A quick read. 

Rating: 2/5                        144 pages, 1984