This story sucked me in from the start and never let me go. I appreciate the author's ability to NOT feel obliged to explain everything, but instead to let the tale flow swiftly along, unimpeded. Now I need to reread The Blue Sword again. ( )

Aerin is an outcast in her own father’s court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her.

She makes friends with her father’s lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father’s library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat’s weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .

But modern dragons, while formidable opponents fully capable of killing a human being, are small and accounted vermin. There is no honor in killing dragons. The great dragons are a tale out of ancient history.

That is, until the day that the king is riding out at the head of an army. A weary man on an exhausted horse staggers into the courtyard where the king’s troop is assembled: “The Black Dragon has come . . . Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened.”

Robin McKinley's mesmerizing history of Damar is the stuff that legends are made of.

Aerin is the only child of the king of Damar, and should be his rightful heir. But she is also the daughter of a witchwoman of the North, who died when she was born, and the Damarians cannot trust her.

But Aerin's destiny is greater than her father's people know, for it leads her to battle with Maur, the Black Dragon, and into the wilder Damarian Hills, where she meets the wizard Luthe. It is he who at last tells her the truth about her mother, and he also gives over to her hand the Blue Sword, Gonturan. But such gifts as these bear a great price, a price Aerin only begins to realize when she faces the evil mage, Agsded, who has seized the Hero's Crown, greatest treasure and secret strength of Damar. ( )

sequel to "The Blue Sword"; not quite as good as the prequel, but good ( )

Good as ever. ( )

This was #98 on NPR's list of YA novels...I'm working through this list, which means I'll be reading Fantasy lit, which I really don't care for. At all.

What was good about this one--female protagonist, not driven into decision by a love triangle. I appreciated that much. And the fact that even when the men in her life disapproved of her choices, she didn't seem to care and did what she saw as necessary anyway.

The main character was fine, and I liked the dialogue. But--and this is my problem with Fantasty lit in general--there's just not enough dialogue, and I get lost in the pages upon pages of describing a world or a monster or the traditions of the people.

I'd definitely recommend this book to any fan of Fantasy lit, though--especially girls. Nice to see a female protagonist.

But my next book is going to be a Gallagher Girls book. Much more my speed of female heroes. ( )