Dragon Rider – Cornelia Funke [translated by Anthea Bell]
Copyright 2004 [original copyright 1997]
The Chicken House/Scholastic, Inc. - 523 pages
For readers age 9 and older
Review by Richard Sanders

This week’s review revisits author Cornelia Funke, whose last book was the very well-received Inkheart, from 2003. Her new work, Dragon Rider, is not related to Inkheart, but is a free-standing novel with its own mythology and its own array of fantastic creatures. Unfortunately, I’d have to say that the creatures, and Ms. Funke’s portrayal of them in a series of charming drawings, are the most interesting aspects of the novel… certainly there’s very little in the way of riveting plot or well-developed characters.

Dragon Rider is a fantasy story, although it seems to be set in the present day. A tribe of dragons living in a hidden valley somewhere in England is threatened by an approaching human construction project. One young dragon, Firedrake, is determined to find a safe place for his people to live, and he sets off with a companion [a cat-like brownie named Sorrel] to find the haven of the dragons, which may or may not exist somewhere in the Himalayas. Stopping in a city to get directions from a helpful rat, Firedrake and Sorrel pick up a homeless boy named Ben, who then accompanies them on their quest – becoming the “dragon rider” of the book’s title. Why was Ben in the warehouse? Does he have a family? Where did he go to school? None of these questions are ever really answered – Ben is simply a sort of generic “nice kid” who happens to be able to fly off with a dragon without anyone worrying about him. The three friends then continue their quest across land and sea, encountering a variety of quirky creatures… monsters and dwarves, sea-serpents and elves, to name a few. And then there’s the big villain of the tale, who chases them – a gigantic, formidably-armored, dragon-killing monster called Nettlebrand, who wants to find the hidden dragons himself… to hunt them and eat them. Nettlebrand is relentlessly grumpy, but not really that much of a villain – he’s done very bad things in the distant past, but during the course of this book, he’s mostly bark and very little bite… not really very impressive in the archives of villainy.

So, we have a fairly standard plot, some characters we don’t know much about, being chased over 500 pages by a grouchy monster. Well… it’s not really that bad. The creatures are interesting, but it almost reads as though the author invented all of these fabulous things and then wrote the book around them to show them off. Given her suspenseful, well-plotted Inkheart, this is a little puzzling… until you look closely at the book’s publication information. Dragon Rider was actually Cornelia Funke’s first book – repackaged for the fans she earned with The Thief Lord and Inkheart. Seen from a different perspective, Dragon Rider becomes more of a hint of good things to come, rather than a disappointment, and maybe worth reading for that hint, but not so outstanding, in and of itself.

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Richard R. Sanders
Director - Hart County Library