★★★☆☆ Least-favored child

Calling on Dragons

Patricia C. Wrede

In her Introduction to Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede comes very close to saying that it is her least favorite of the Enchanted Forest chronicles. She doesn't quite do that -- I gather that an author saying, "This is my least favorite book" is like a mother saying "You are my least favorite child" -- it is just not done. Calling was the last of the four written. Wrede wrote Talking to Dragons first. The illustrious Jane Yolen asked her for another children's book, and thus was Dealing with Dragons born. Dealing is set in the distant past of Talking. Thus Yolen asked for another novel to fill in the gap.

There was a problem. Wrede *HATES* cliffhangers. But, not knowing that she was writing the final book in a series, she wrote herself into a trap when she wrote Talking. The beginning of Talking necessitated a cliffhanger ending to any immediate prequel. Wrede evaded this problem with the second book Searching for Dragons, by having it end well before Talking. But Wrede's publisher and Yolen, who is obviously a force to be reckoned with, demanded that the gap be filled in. And so it was, and we got Calling.

Calling suffers from two handicaps: first, like Searching it is filler. Second, it ends in a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger didn't really bother me, in part because Talking is already available for immediate follow-up. But like Searching, Calling has a meandering filler plot.

It reads like a succession of jokes. Calling is told from Morwen's point of view. You may remember that Morwen is the Enchanted Forest Witch. She has a lot of cats, whose speech she can understand. Thus we get a lot of comic cat dialog. In addition, there is Killer -- he's the blue winged donkey you see flying around on the cover. I won't spoil his story for you, but he is there mostly as comic relief. The jokes are fun.

In the end, I would have to say this is MY least favorite Enchanted Forest novel. It is still fun, and I'm not sorry to have read it. But it doesn't really stand on its own as a coherent story.

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