I found this novel to be very fast reading, fun, moody, sometimes verging on horror (it was definitely dark fantasy), and an improvement over the first installment in this series. Some of the problems I had with the first volume in the series – a dull second act, or at least one in which nothing seemed to happen, and a lack of time spent on what exactly Fern’s witchcraft powers are and how she develops them – are much, much better handled this time around. My only real complaint about the book is that took a little while before I got hooked on the story. Some or most of that may come from the fact that so much time has passed since the first installment in the trilogy. In _Prospero’s Children_, Fern was 16, living with her brother Will and her father Robin. In the opening of _The Dragon Charmer_ twelve years have passed, with both Fern and Will out on their own, Robin even less of a figure of importance in the story, and Fern is about to get married (indeed, has returned to the house that was the center of events in the first book to have her wedding). We are also introduced to two new (human) characters, ones that for various reasons are major either in terms of driving the story or major actors within the story itself. One is Fern’s fiancé, a rather colorless man that just does not become a memorable figure, and another is one that becomes a major character, Fern’s best friend, and later a good friend (or more?) of Will’s, Gaynor Mobberley. That is really it though in terms of complaints; the rest of the book is quite solid and I really enjoyed it. There are lots of positive things I really enjoyed in this second volume of the trilogy. At first I thought Gaynor was a plot device to avoid having Fern’s point of view in certain key scenes, but later I decided she was a good character in her own right. As I mentioned earlier, the pacing was much better in this book, with nothing at all like the dull middle part of _Prospero’s Children_. If anything the book just got faster and faster in pacing, making me stay up later and later. I liked some of the magical concepts explored in the book. One of my favorites is the importance of free will. Though free will as such wasn’t much discussed, it seemed to underlay much of the magical rules in the series. An ancient evil spirit for instance may want to very much possess your body, but it has to be knowingly invited in by you. You may come to great doom if you turn around in the Underworld (never turn around!) but you still have to make that choice yourself. Horrible monsters may want to enter your home and do Bad Things, but they still have to be invited in by the home’s owner. An ancient evil may be seeking vengeance upon you, but unless you somehow invite it(which can be as simple as saying its name) it will likely leave you alone. The other magical concept that I liked was the idea of being outside of Time (always capitalized). Whole magical realms exist away from our world of Time, and while events do occur there they don’t flow the same way they do in the mortal world. What’s more, creatures from there have a different view of not only the actual comings and goings of mortals (and what current events and fashion is), but how things are viewed by those who live in Time as concepts in themselves. I won’t go into it more but to me I think the author was really on to something about why fantasy realms seem stuck in a quasi-medieval setting all the time, particularly jarring when these realms have some sort of connection with the modern real world of the 20th or 21st centuries. Other things I liked include the fact we get two new villains, two evil hag-like witches, Morgus, the Witch Queen, along with her ally Sysselore, along with the continuing (and more fleshed out) evil of Azmordis from the first book. The Gift and what it can and can’t do is much better explained, and Fern is actually shown training in its use. I love the various Otherworld settings, including the creepy and well-described Underworld and the very vividly and well done environs of the Tree (with is macabre fruit), the former setting relying heavily on Greek mythological backgrounds, the latter one on Norse, but both blending together I thought quite well. I loved, loved, love the House-goblin concept and in particular the House-goblin character Bradachin. He was a great character and I loved his very thick Scottish dialect, sometimes so thick even the other characters had to more or less puzzle through what he was saying but always fun to read and see what he would do next. Oh, and we do get a dragon and a dragon charmer and both are quite engaging as well.
What do You think about The Dragon Charmer (2002)?
