Yo, Jennifer Strange, La última Cazadragones (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
This book was phenomenal. It takes a lot for me to say that. While I read this for a class, I will definitely be reading it again.Jasper Fforde used many different tactics that made this book for me. I felt like I could step out of my life and into the lives of his characters. It made me happy to imagine what a quarkbeast was and why it was important. (I don't care why it is important, it was just cool.) I handed this to my husband directly after I finished reading it and he says the same thing "This book rocks!!!" I am looking forward to the second book!**WARNINGS**Drugs-1 starSex-1 starLanguage-1 starAlcohol- 1 starViolence- 1 star1 star-little to none 5 star-extremeI rated the warnings this way because it is extremely similar to Harry Potter's first few books where there was some violence, but it was never more than a 12 year old could handle. First and foremost, this is not a serious book. The Last Dragonslayer is a comedic fantasy adventure set in a modern (characters enjoy technologies like cars, phones, etc.) world were magic is dying and becoming unpopular. By unpopular, I mean that it is mainly used for plumbing and pizza delivery, among other similar tasks. The main character, a sixteen-year-old girl named Jennifer Strange, isn’t even a magician, she manages magic. She runs the Kazam (yes) Mystical Arts Management, a (relatively) major assembly of sorcerers, enchanters, and other magically inclined persons. And, as the title suggests, the plot revolves around a dragon (the last dragon) and a dragonslayer (the last of those, too).I found the setting of this book almost as intriguing as the more typically intriguing factors in a book, like the plot. I remember laughing out loud when, on the second page, the land is referred to as “The Ununited Kingdoms.” Constantly throughout the book the author drops in subtle little details about the world. In one passage on page three, the wizard Moobin (awesome names too, by the way) is completely the crossword in “The Hereford Daily Eyestrain.” However, he completes it by using letters from the “article on Queen Mimosa’s patronage of the Troll War Widow’s Fund,” moving them across the page. This simple passage tells you about a newspaper, a war, a fundraiser, a queen, and a magical pastime, all in one paragraph.The humor in the book (a key part!) is very, very, nerdy, which for me, is a very good thing. On page 25, one character asks Jennifer if they could modify the dish-cleaning spell to do the laundry as well. Jennifer replies “It was written in the ancient RUNIX spell-language, and is read-only and can’t be modified.” This line brilliantly compares spells to a programming language (a spell-language), especially as “readonly” is a common term in programming to, as the name might suggest, make a variable unmodifiable, but readable (only!). A particularly nerdy joke comes from the dragon Maltcassion (he’s full of ‘em, but this one was my favorite), he says “Counting in base ten is pretty wild... base twelve is far superior.” Mathematicians have noted the advantages of base twelve (counting with twelve digits, as opposed to our ten 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), like how twelve is divisible by 1,2,3,4,6, and 12, while 10 only by 1,2,5 and 10.The Last Dragonslayer is one of my favorite books that I’ve read in the past year or so. Any reader should have an appreciation for fantasy, weird humor, and the word “Quark.” I would especially recommend it for readers of any of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. For those who have never found fantasy appealing, I still would recommend this book, as long as one appreciates comedy they can love this book.
What do You think about Yo, Jennifer Strange, La última Cazadragones (2011)?
No ze začátku jsem byla zmatená jak sáňky v letošní zimě, ale nebylo to špatné :)
—Cookehxxx
A quirky modern fantasy. Not my taste, but others might like it.
—dancenrain
I enjoyed this. It's clever but too much for its own good.
—sue
Fun fantasy juvenile on a world of magic and dragons etc.
—famian
