"Dragonhaven" by Robin McKinley

First, to clear up anyone coming in here with the wrong impression, this is a review of Dragonhaven, by Robin McKinley, not Dragon Haven by the other Robin.

(Seriously, I have no idea how Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb, book 2 of the Rain Wild Chronicles, was able to get published under that title. It’s not like Robin McKinley is an unknown author, and her book was published 3 years earlier than Hobb’s! The fact that they’re both named “Robin” moves it to the realm of the comically absurd.)

Anyway.

Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley is one of my favorite books ever, and it doesn’t get nearly the love it should. In anticipation of Dragon Day, I decided to give the audiobook a try and see how it worked in that format. The TLDR is that it works very, very well.

Jake is an ordinary 15 year old boy. Or at least as ordinary as one could expect when you live in backcountry Wyoming, a two hour drive from the nearest thing that can be called a town, and your dad is the head of the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies at Smokehill National Park & Dragon Reserve. Smokehill is home to several hundred of the last remaining draco australiensis, the true dragons, and Jake is completely obsessed with them. Everyone takes it as a given that Jake will go to college, get a few PhDs, and come back and take over when his dad retires. The last few years have been hard, though - Jake’s mom (also a dragon biologist) was killed (not by a dragon) while on a research sabbatical at the dragon reserve in Kenya, and both Jake and his dad have been struggling to cope.

Things get thrown for a little bit of a loop when Jake (on his first solo overnight camping trip in the park) finds a dead poacher, a dead dragon, and the babies the dead dragon had just given birth to. All dead … except one. And Jake doesn’t think about it - he takes the surviving baby dragon and tucks it into his shirt (draco australiensis is from Australia, and shares some evolutionary traits with marsupials - including pouches) and does his best to keep the tiny, ugly thing alive.

This is all a huge, huge deal for several reasons. The least of it is that a poacher managed to get into Smokehill and kill a dragon. Of far greater concern is that the dragon killed the poacher. Despite the fact that there has never been a recorded incident of a dragon killing a human except in self-defense, and never has a dragon eaten a human at all, they’re still 80 feet long (plus tail), breathe fire, and fly. People are scared of them. Smokehill’s situation has always been tenuous. There’s always been a large contingent that views dragons as inherently dangerous and thinks they should all be destroyed. It might be illegal to kill dragons, as an endangered species, but it’s also illegal to help them. So this is a crisis on several levels.

The solution? Jake, with the help of the Smokehill rangers (mostly drawn from the local Native American community) will try to keep the baby dragon (now named Lois) alive, because doing anything else is unthinkable despite it being highly illegal. Everyone else at Smokehill will try to keep it hidden, all while fighting off political and media attacks on the park by the dead poacher’s rich parents. Jake’s mostly unaware of this, though, because little Lois demands food every half an hour, round the clock, panics when she’s separated from Jake for more than about 10 seconds, has a body temperature hot enough to leave burns on Jake’s skin after prolonged contact, and smells … not bad, exactly, but strong. Really, really strong.

I love this book for what it is. More than anything, it’s about a boy and his dragon, and about someone interested in dragons from a scientific perspective trying to raise one. Think a teenaged, snarky, American, male Lady Trent in way over his head.

I also love this book for what it isn’t. It could have very easily become a series of anecdotes about keeping the dragon hidden from nosy social workers and tourists getting places they’re not supposed to go - but that’s not what it’s about. That stuff happens, but it’s mostly off screen and dealt with by the adults. Everyone is clear on this: Jake’s job is keeping Lois alive, and that’s more than enough for his plate. Let everyone else worry about the other details.

It’s all written in first person, as something of a memoir written by now-in-his-early-20s Jake. It’s incredibly easy to read, and the audiobook is a joy to listen to. The narrator injects all the snark and sarcasm you could hope for from a teenager.

For McKinley fans, this book is a departure from her usual. It’s the only thing she’s ever written with a male protagonist, for one thing (which she says happened by accident). It’s probably closer to Sunshine than anything else, but that’s mostly because it’s modern-day America. I’ve always felt that McKinley’s books (except Deerskin) are low-key hilarious, and Dragonhaven certainly lives up to that.

The other comparison that needs to be made is to How to Train Your Dragon (the movies - I’m unfamiliar with the books). One of the best things about those movies has always just been Toothless being Toothless. If you’re one of those enlightened people who could happily watch Toothless playing fetch for hours, you’ll find Lois an absolute delight.

Bingo categories: Optimistic Spec Fic (hard mode); A Book that Made You Laugh (hard mode); Novel Featuring a Magical Pet (arguably hard mode, and Jake would be terribly offended to hear Lois called a “pet.” Lois is his squirmy, squishy, smelly, dragon daughter, and Jake is a very proud (if very tired) parent).