carol. 's Reviews > Calling on Dragons

My least favorite of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. When I recently acquired the e-box set, I discovered Wrede put a little introduction in front of each book. She begins this one by saying, ""Calling on Dragons is not merely a book I hadn't intended to write; it is the one book of the four that I actively didn't want to write. It was the last of the four... to be written." This was written last, with left-over bits from book two, and then a goal to ease the chronological transition between the events of the last book and the last (which was more or less the first-ish book). As such, the ending is a bit problematic, leaving a giant gap of sixteen years between it and the next. Some might say it's a cliff-hanger, although Wrede felt like it was wrapped up to an equilibrium point. I suggest having Talking to Dragons to hand.

Regardless, at fourteen I was most irritated by Killer the rabbit. It turns out that not much has changed in [redacted] years; I remain annoyed by a rabbit with a bad dye job. Yes, of all the horrible things in the Enchanted Forest, a rabbit with no sense of self-preservation (do they ever have one?) and a tendency to eat the wrong thing (as they do) is the one that sticks out. Perhaps Wrede meant the disasters that befall it as comic-relief to what she felt was a 'darker' book, but mostly, it's just irritating to have someone so stupid be part of an adventuring party. Really, it's inclusion means that time is taken away from fleshing out characters or describing the wood.

Each book is narrated by a different member of the Enchanted family, which left a bit of a problem with this one. Wrede settled on Morwen, partly because she is interesting, and I think partly because of the cats. Unfortunately, though this is narrated by Morwen, we actually learn very little about her. There is a lot of dialogue with her nine cats, however, which may or may not be entertaining, depending on how you feel about cats.

Somewhat surprisingly, it holds up to memory. Just not in a good way.