Stephen Hayes reviewed Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
None
3 stars
This is the second dragon book I've read this month. The first was [b:The dragons of Ordinary Farm|5322151|The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Ordinary Farm Adventures, # 1)|Tad Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1432566708s/5322151.jpg|5389622] (my review here).
Both books are about the last dragons on earth, and both of them feature an older girl and a younger boy, so they invite comparison. Both satirise commerce and corporate greed. Of the two, I think this one was better. The plot was less repetitious, it had more humour, and the dialogue was a lot less stilted.
But the biggest difference for me was that while in both books the children (a girl in her early teens and a pre-teen boy) had to outwit adult authority, in [b:The last Dragonslayer|13316328|The Last Dragonslayer (The Chronicles of Kazam, #1)|Jasper Fforde|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1346791460s/13316328.jpg|13380425] the reason and need for doing so was clear, whereas in [b:The dragons of Ordinary Farm|5322151|The Dragons of Ordinary Farm …
This is the second dragon book I've read this month. The first was [b:The dragons of Ordinary Farm|5322151|The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Ordinary Farm Adventures, # 1)|Tad Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1432566708s/5322151.jpg|5389622] (my review here).
Both books are about the last dragons on earth, and both of them feature an older girl and a younger boy, so they invite comparison. Both satirise commerce and corporate greed. Of the two, I think this one was better. The plot was less repetitious, it had more humour, and the dialogue was a lot less stilted.
But the biggest difference for me was that while in both books the children (a girl in her early teens and a pre-teen boy) had to outwit adult authority, in [b:The last Dragonslayer|13316328|The Last Dragonslayer (The Chronicles of Kazam, #1)|Jasper Fforde|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1346791460s/13316328.jpg|13380425] the reason and need for doing so was clear, whereas in [b:The dragons of Ordinary Farm|5322151|The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Ordinary Farm Adventures, # 1)|Tad Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1432566708s/5322151.jpg|5389622] it wasn't.
Having said that, however, I also don;t think that this is one of [a:Jasper fforde|4432|Jasper Fforde|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1350497674p2/4432.jpg]'s best books. Jennifer Strange and her sidekick Tiger Prawns are running a dying business of managing magic. The owner of the business is missing, and they find themselves looking after a bunch of retired and semi-retired wizards in the Kingdom of Hereford which is about to go to war with the Duchy of Brecon over who gets to control the Dragonlands when the last Dragon dies. In addition to the political aspect, there are commercial interests at stake, with commercial firms vying with individual speculators to grab the biggest and best bits of real estate. The satire on this it a bit heavy-handed in a Mad magazine kind of way.
I found Jasper fforde's earlier books much better, and this one seems a bit slapstick: Harry Potter meets Terry Pratchett, if you like that kind of thing, but not really as good as either.
