Let's Try This Reviewing Thing: The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde

(If you don't have the time, check the bottom for a one-sentence summary of the review.)

You have no idea how excited I was for this book. I love, love Jasper Fforde’s works. He’s a popular writer in the UK, but unlike JK Rowling hasn’t made too much ground in the states. The school library has almost all his works (or all of them, I don’t really know), and I’ve read every one on the shelves.

Jasper Fforde’s best talent, in my opinion, is his ability to make these fantastic worlds that completely immerse you in the story. The Eyre Affair, his first book and the beginning of this Thursday Next Series, is set in a world where the Crimea Wars are still going on in 1985, time travel is common, and people can literally jump into books and change what happens in them. In The Big Over Easy, the first book in his Nursery Crimes series, Jack Sprat, Mary Mary, and other characters from Mother Goose tales solve murders and aliens are a strange but accepted add-on to the universe. In Shades of Grey (my favorite book so far from him), all people can only see one color on the light spectrum, what color you see judges your place in life and who you have to marry, and spoons are one of the rarest commodities available.

The Last Dragonslayer is Fforde’s first book geared to young adults, and judging by the summary I expected yet another crazy world to get lost in:

In the good old day, magic was indispensable; it could both save a kingdom and clear a clogged drain. But now magic is fading.

Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell and magic carpets have been reduced to pizza delivery. Fifteen-year-old foundling Jennifer Strange runs Kazam Mystical Arts Management, an employment for magicians—but it’s hard to stay in business when magic is drying up. And then the visions start, predicting the death of the world’s last dragon at the hands of an unnamed Dragonslayer. If that’s true, everything will change Kazam—and for Jennifer.

Because something is coming. Something known as…Big Magic.

Let me just get this out of the way: it starts out a little confusing. I probably would have put down the book if I didn’t know Mr. Fforde’s talent for painting a clear picture of the world…eventually. Things happen with little to know explanation, and you sort of have to go with it for a few chapters before the exposition sets in. And like all his other books, the exposition sets up a beautiful and wondrous world where the Ununited Kingdoms have lost use of magic, which is a finite source by the way, and the last dragon in the world is about to die by the hand of an unknown dragonslayer (it doesn’t take much to guess who’s going to be).

Do you like adventure? This has it. Prophecies of a Chosen One? Yeah, but you better be prepared for the concept to be made fun of. A twist ending? Not even I saw that one coming.

Romance? Eh…not so much. But it’s the first in the series, and there’s always the possibility. It’s an incredible adventure, and if you can stick with it you won’t be disappointed.

If nothing else, do it for the Quarkbeast. I give this nine out of ten stars, and suggest you get it out of the library soon.

Tl;dr: Great plot, even greater setting, and an engaging writing style typical of Jasper Fforde makes The Last Dragonslayer a book I’d recommend to anyone.