Review: Dragon's Green

by Scarlett Thomas
Age Range: 8-12
Release Date: May 30, 2017
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
9781481497848

There are a lot of fantasy stories. There are especially a lot of fantasy stories written for the elementary school age, and it can be a challenge to know which is going to be unique at first sight. Will this be something new? Or will it feel like a copy of those that have come before it? Well, I am here to tell all of you, Dragon’s Green is definitely not a knockoff. It is something incredibly and undeniably special.

Thomas’s first novel for children boasts a lot of the elements often featured in this sort of fantasy tale: the young hero learning of her power, and the discovery of a magical community hidden just beyond the regular world we know. There are even elements of timeless classics such as Inkheart, but none of these feel borrowed or overdone. They feel as exciting and wondrous as they did before you as a reader started noticing the trends. Dragon’s Green sent me back to my eleven-year-old self, who would have turned the pages almost too fast to take in, and it opened up a brand-new world of magic that even as an adult I would love to be a part of.

Euphemia Truelove (known as Effie) believes magic is real. At least, she wants to be believe it is real, but her grandfather Griffin Truelove is the most magical person she knows, and he has never admitted to it. When Griffin is attacked, Effie is thrust into a world of magic which, as much as she always longed for its existence, she knows nothing about. What she does know is she must protect her grandfather’s library, and that is has fallen into the hands of the menacing collector Leonard Levar. But Leonard is not merely a collector of books. He is something far more dangerous.

The magic in Thomas's story is satisfyingly complex. There is a structure for the way things work, including the existence of artifacts (called boons, which can only be properly used by those with the correct affinity), and a system for magical currency. There are witches, there are warriors. Scholars, healers. Heroes. Oh, and a world within books, where the reader can enter and attempt to finish out the story. Yet, even this seemingly simple feature has its rules and caveats, and there is much more to it than it would originally seem. Each new tidbit we learn begs so many questions, and it is clear from the get-go that Effie’s world has been carefully planned. We learn just enough in this first volume to make sense in the context of the story, but there is much, much more to be uncovered in future books, and it seems clear that the author already has these answers.

Effie’s set of friends is just spectacular, the four of them also quickly revealed to be more than what their labels would tell you. There is Maximilian, the nerdy kid; Wolf, the jock and bully; Lexy, earnest and helpful; and Raven, the class weirdo. These preconceived notions are shattered as soon as you enter each character’s stratosphere, and it is their development as real, rounded people that I particularly enjoyed.

So thank you, Ms. Thomas. I am thrilled to have followed along on Effie’s journey, and I will be eagerly awaiting the next spellbinding volume. If you as a reader are looking for the next “thing” to get into, this book is it. If you yearn to feel the open wonder you did as a child for a new magical world, this world is it. If you know a child wondering what universe to dive into next, I tell you, this universe is it. There are a lot of fantasy stories. I highly recommend you try out this one.

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