Searching for Dragons (1991)

And now a story from the Prince’s perspective – only he’s a king, King Mandanbar, the King of the Enchanted Wood. And even though everyone thinks he needs to get married, since he’s overworked, he absolutely refuses to have anything to do with princesses. Luckily for him, Cimorene is not your ordinary princess, and when she needs some assistance rescuing the King of the Dragons, Mandanbar gets the chance to get to know her. Solid and entertaining fantasy, with no cloying sweetness or condescending manners. ( )

earching For Dragons delivers just as much joy and adventure as the first book in the Enchanted Forest series. It’s a quick middle grade novel with a lot of formulaic elements, but hey, if it works don’t fix it, right? This quick book was a fun listen and as with Dealing With Dragons… it made me bemoan that I somehow missed this quartet when I was younger.

While we are already familiar with Princess Cimorene from Dealing With Dragons, we now have a new principal character: King Mendenbar of the Enchanted Forest. Mendenbar is a busy man! He’s finally gotten a quick break between elf drama and yet another giant war to kick up his feet and relax for a minute. But he’s the King of the Enchanted Forest… something suspect is always bound to happen! In this case, something fishy is going on and it appears that the dragons are attacking the forest… or does it?

From their first encounter, Cimorene and Mendenbar have great chemistry. Not so much romantic chemistry as that they’re complimentary characters. Their banter works really well and helps keep the journeying aspect of the story light and flowing. The minor characters – new and old – are all interesting and put a little bit of the spin on traditional fairytale characters.

It’s important to remember that Searching For Dragons was released thirty years ago. It’s easy to look at some of the elements of this book and call them cliche or overdone… and important to recall that Wrede did them long before many others. I still think the whole thing is delightful, even if the ending was a bit cheesy. Still, I have every confidence that books three and four will bring just as much adventure and individual character shine as the first two did.

This is a great novel for middle grade readers. While it actually does stand alone (rare in a series!), I still recommend reading Dealing With Dragons first so you can get Cimorene’s backstory as well. I enjoyed this one, and would certainly keep it on my shelf or buy it for the younger readers in my life! ( )

I could have sworn I reread the first book in this series earlier this year but if I did I guess I never recorded it. Oh well.

Fun and self aware fantasy book. ( )

Cimorene and company set off to find the missing Kazul, King of the Dragons.

The Society of Wizards are stirring up trouble again in this second book of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. This time, they are trying to start a war between the King of the Enchanted Forest, (Mendanbar) and the King of the Dragons (Kazul), by burning a section of his forest, leaving dragon scales as evidence. Mendanbar decides a state visit to King Kazul is long overdue and sets out for such a visit, only to find a distraught Princess Cimorene, who is concerned that Kazul has disappeared and not sent word. Together, they set out on a quest to find and rescue Kazul. The banter between Mendanbar and Cimorene is wonderful, Morwen and Telemain were very helpful along the way, and some of their challenges were worrying, including magic carpets, meddling giants, and Jack the peddler. I liked this book much better than the first one in this series. ( )