The Dragon's Boy: A Tale of Young King Arthur

I started this book as a courtesy to my daughter. Turned into a quick read. It was fun and imaginative. Knowing a bit of Arthurian legend I recognized names and themes easily but the story never got bogged down with mythology. The ending was a bit anti-climactic as some others have said but after thinking about it for a bit. Its not REALLY an ending..its a beginning. Anyone even slightly familiar with the legend of King Arthur will recognize what has to happen next. Thinking of it this way also means there already are plenty of sequels.

This story is about a boy that is in a forest who stumbles over a cave with a dragon inside.

When I first read this book I had no clue it was about King Arthur, as a young boy or otherwise, because the copy at my library didn't proclaim in bold letters "A Tale of Young King Arthur." Not until the very end did it dawn on me that this wonderful book I was reading had anything at all to do with the legendary King Arthur I had already read so much about. But this book is not about King Arthur until the very end. For the most part it is about a boy named Artos and his trials and tribulations in growing up and meeting a dragon. This dragon teaches him things he would have no chance to learn anywhere else and balances out his life in a most peculiar way.

I think this book is totally great. It is a mystery in disguise, and the ending is totally wonderful. I think there ought to be a sequel, but I don't know if there is one!

I read "The Dragon's Boy" originally as a short story in Jane Yolen's collection "Here There Be Dragons," and found it thoughtful, moving, and above all a purely enjoyable story. When I found it had been expanded into a novel, I was a little wary. I wasn't quite sure what would happen to it. Then I read the novel, and all fears were set to rest. While there are distinct differences in the action of the endings of the short story and the novel, the main point remains unchanged, and I enjoyed finding small episodes of the short story fleshed out into chapters of the novel without ever becoming overblown. Most of all, I love the final revelation of "The Dragon's Boy," when Artos, who has been gaining wisdom from a dragon hidden in a secret cave on the moors, finds out at last the true identity of his dragon. I would argue that the ending is the high point of the book, not anticlimactic of all. I was not entirely surprised when I read it for the first time, because I had enough familiarity with various Arthurian retellings to pick up on certain names when they came around-but rest assured, that did not in any way diminish my enjoyment of the story. "The Dragon's Boy" is a fascinating slant on the early life of King Arthur (made famous in "The Sword and the Stone," by T.H. White) and an excellent novel in its own right. Read, by request of the dragon, and you will certainly enjoy.