Rating: 4 stars
Read the Rainbow - Red
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III may be the least intimidating Viking in several generations, which is a bit of a problem, since he's the son of the Chief, and therefore meant to lead the Hairy Hooligans when he gets older. He's skinny, puny, bookish and not even slightly intimidating, and when he has to compete in the traditional manhood trial of the tribe, and sneak into a cave to capture himself a dragon, he ends up with the smallest, least impressive dragon of the lot. Hiccup should have an advantage over the other youths when it comes to taming and getting a dragon to do his bidding - he can speak Dragonese. He can't really tell anyone about that, of course, since Dragonese has been forbidden in the Hairy Hooligans for over a hundred years. Also, Hiccup's dragon, Toothless, is stubborn and selfish and couldn't care less about listening to Hiccup.
When the day of the dragon trials finally arrives, a massive fight breaks out among all the recently tamed dragons, and in an unprecedented event, all the youths of the tribe (and their rivals) are supposed to be banished to the wilderness. However, before that can happen, the tribes are faced with a new, much bigger challenge - a very large, very hungry sea dragon has awoken and now wants to eat all the humans. How are they going to defeat something so enormous and dangerous?
I was already at university when these books came out, and I have only watched the first two movies, which are clearly VERY loosely based on this source material. So loosely that pretty much the only thing they've kept is the names of Hiccup and his dragon Toothless (who is not black, super rare and very playful), and maybe some of the vikings in the tribe. So, at least I didn't have anything spoiled for me when I picked this up to read it for a bonus book club meeting we had about dragon riders. Of course, while Hiccup discovers that it's possible to ride dragons in the first movie, nothing like that happens in the book. They mostly use the dragons to intimidate each other and to catch fish.
Nevertheless, it was a fun book, and I think my eight-year-old son would probably enjoy it. I will probably read it to him at some point in the next year, after the husband and I are done reading him children's classics from our own childhoods. I don't see myself continuing the series for my own sake, but if the kid enjoys them, I will probably read more of them. They are short, action-packed and feature dragons? What's not to love?
Judging a book by its cover: This is a children's book, so I would have thought you'd want something more colourful and exciting to catch the eye of the potential reader. Red, red, maroon and gold is certainly a choice, but I'm not sure I would have grabbed this off a library shelf if I hadn't already known what the book was about. Hiccup also looks nothing like he's described in the book.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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