How to Slay a Dragon

A Fantasy Hero’s Guide to the Real Middle Ages

eBook, 224 pages

English language

Published by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:
978-1-9821-6413-3
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3 stars (2 reviews)

Grab your magical sword and take the place of your favorite fantasy character with this fun and historically accurate how-to guide to solving epic quests.

What should you ask a magic mirror? How do you outwit a genie? Where should you dig for buried treasure? Fantasy media’s favorite clichés get new life from How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero’s Guide to the Real Middle Ages, a historically accurate romp through the medieval world. Each entry presents a trope from video games, books, movies, or TV—such as saving the princess or training a wizard—as a problem for you to solve, as if you were the hero of your own fantasy quest. Through facts sourced from a rich foundation of medieval sources, you will learn how your magical problems were solved by people in the actual Middle Ages.

Divided into thematic subsections based on typical stages in a fantastical …

3 editions

Review of 'How to Slay a Dragon' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Having enjoyed and followed the author’s responses over on AskHistorians, I was excited to hear that Stevenson had published a book as well. Though I didn’t formally study the medieval period, it’s adjacent to what I did study, and is nevertheless a deeply fascinating and interesting period of time. People don’t give it enough credit. As a fantasy reader, I also like how medieval elements and tropes often find their way into the narrative—and as Stevenson points out in this book, often times inaccurately. Sometimes the medieval period was even wackier than you’d expect, wackier than any fantasy novel. Imagine that.

This book was short and a quick, enjoyable read. I found myself laughing out loud a few times and not wanting to go to sleep because of how interesting it was. I had several tabs open looking up figures or concepts that were mentioned in the book. Suffice …

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2 stars

Subjects

  • Civilization, history, medieval