Dealing With Dragons - Patricia C Wrede

Summary: Cimorene is everything a princess is not supposed to be: headstrong, tomboyish, smart - and bored. So bored that she runs away to live with a dragon - and finds the family and excitement she's been looking for. (picture and summary from goodreads.com)

My Review:  I used to read this book a lot as a kid, and it always made me laugh, and I wanted to read it again since it's been many, many years.  It's very tongue in cheek, which is delightful, poking fun at all the fantasy and fairy tale tropes, turning them smartly on their head.  It also gives us a very unconventional princess in Cimorene, which is refreshing, and she's always been one of my favorite book characters.  She doesn't want to be a princess and do needlework and be saved by princes, heck, she doesn't want to have anything to do with princes, so she hangs out with dragons instead.

In her upbringing, Cimorene would sneak away from her princess lessons and instead learn fencing, Latin, and magic.  Her exasperated parents finally decide she will be married to a prince from another kingdom, but Cimorene isn't having that and instead goes and volunteers to become a dragon's princess, something that just isn't done (princesses are always captured, they never volunteer).

We also have Kazul, Cimorene's dragon.  When it comes to dragons, she is a sensible one, and a perfect match to Cimorene.  Together, they work to sort out the mystery of what the wizards in the land are up to, and I love the friendship between them.

Wrede's writing is just so cleverly fun, her dialogue and characters are cheeky.  For fantasy fans, the world is a familiar one, but because of Cimorene, we get to see that world in a new light.  Witches, wizards, princesses, dragons, curses, magic, they all take a new light in Wrede's world, and it's one that just makes me smile every time I read it.

My Rating: 4.5 stars

For the sensitive reader: not much of note, this book is clean and fun and very lighthearted.