Dealing with Dragons

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Dealing with Dragons is a young adult fantasy novel written by Patricia Wrede, in which the fictional princess Cimorene escapes her oppressive family to be a dragon's princess. It is the first book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles series.

[edit] Summary

Cimorene, the youngest princess of the kingdom of Linderwall, is frustrated with her cloistered, sheltered life of luxury Linderwall. She is different from her sisters in all ways. She is, while still strikingly beautiful, black-haired and as tall as most of the prices who visited. She is bored with her "proper" lessons in etiquette, embroidery and dancing and bullies the castle staff into teaching her fencing, magic, cooking, and several other subjects that are "improper" for someone of her standing and gender. At the age of 16 her fairy godmother and parents decide that something needs to be done with her.

They take Cimorene to Sathem-By-The-Mountains, a neighboring kingdom, ostensibly for diplomatic purposes, but really to marry Cimorene to Therandil, prince of Sathem-By-The-Mountains. Faced with the prospect of marriage to the prince, who is unintelligent, bound by tradition, and does not like her, she decides to run away. Acting on the advice of a talking frog, who was mistakenly convinced that she wanted to be eaten by a dragon, she goes to a hut in the Mountains of Morning. Arriving at the hut, which is an entrance to the dragons' tunnel complex inside the mountain, she is not eaten, but becomes the princess-servant of the dragon Kazul. Unlike most princesses, she likes her position and becomes good friends with Kazul.

After Cimorene meets the wizard Zemenar, Kazul explains to her that the dragons and the wizards disagree about the wizards' access to the Caves of Fire and Night, where the wizards must go to practice many of their spells. The dragons and the wizards have an agreement that allows the wizards partial access to the Caves of Fire and Night, in exchange for keeping out of the dragons' parts of the Mountains of Morning. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but the wizards have an unusual way to gather magic. Instead of making their own magic, like the dragons, their staffs absorb it from whatever happens to be nearby - including dragons. Their magic being absorbed causes the dragons to have violent allergy attacks, involving balls of fire.

When Kazul is accidentally but non-fatally poisoned by a sample of dragonsbane that Cimorene was asking her about, Cimorene has immediate suspicions that the wizards were gathering this poison most deadly to dragons. When Cimorene is sent to tell another dragon about Kazul's suspicions, he replies that the King of the Dragons has been poisoned fatally--with dragonsbane. Kazul must leave immediately to compete in the trials with Colin's Stone, a rock that magically chooses the next King of the Dragons. In the caves, she meets the Stone Prince, who was sent to gather water from the Well of Healing but was turned to living stone by a misfired curse.

Cimorene learns in the middle of the trials that the wizards poisoned King Tokoz and are planning to interfere with Colin's Stone's magic so as to make a dragon who favors their interests King. In the course of this, she luckily learns that soapy water mixed with lemon juice melts wizards. Cimorene, with the help of the witch Morwen, foils the wizards' plan. Then Kazul, having been chosen to be the next King of the Dragons, ends the agreement with the wizards, and Cimorene settles in for a career as Kazul's assistant.

[edit] Main characters

Heroes:
Alianora - Princess to Woraug
Cimorene - A very bored 16 year old princess from the Kingdom of Linderwall
Kazul - High ranking dragon acknowledged as being overly suspicious
Morwen - A witch and a friend of Kazul
Stone Prince - Prince, partly turned to stone by the gold dipper at the Healing Well

Villains:
Antorell - Son of Zemenar, but not a particualrly powerful wizard himself
Woraug - Bad-tempered dragon, opponent to Kazul
Zemenar - Head wizard of The Society of Wizards, not someone to be crossed