I read The Hero and the Crown

This week's novel is The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley.  This one was recommended to me by by biffle Ariane about a million years ago.  In my defense, I got it as soon as it was available on Kindle from the library.  What, that's not a defense?  Pft.  Sure it is.

Aerin, the king's only daughter, is looked down upon by most of the nobility, because her mother was a witch from the north, and Aerin does not show any magical ability even though the royal family's claim to the throne is based around their magic use.  Aerin takes to fighting dragons, inconvenient pests that breathe fire and sometimes eat livestock and children.  It's not glamorous, which suits Aerin just fine.  When her father forbids her from joining the army as they go to put down a rebellion in the north, and when a great dragon--a huge, flying monster that's thousands of years old--appears, she runs off with just her spears and her rehabilitated war horse to defeat it.

I'm a sucker for sucking-too-much-at-stuff stories where the protagonist doesn't live up to expectations and people have written them off.  I like that these stories always end up being about finding a true calling and finding confidence in yourself and about doing things not because they're expected, but because you want to.  This is fertile YA ground, and I like to roll around in it and inhale the good rich-dirt smell.

In the second section, this gets a little too dream like for my tastes.  Who is that guy?  Why do we trust him?  Why do we like him?  Okay, so he appeared in a dream.  But...who is he?  I preferred the more concrete, interpersonal relationships in the first half of the book, where Aerin navigates her obnoxious cousins being snotty, and she navigates her loving but distant dad, and she navigates the guy who's super into her and it makes everyone jealous and anxious.  I like how when people left her to her own devices, she spent oodles and oodles of time doing stuff she wanted to do, but no one would really think was acceptable behavior, like rehabilitating a lame war horse and researching how to make fireproof paste.  She's not working to do something impressive that will win her people's affection.  She's doing unglamorous work because because outcast gives her the freedom to do unglamorous work.  It gives it a down-to-earth feel even though there are dragons and magic and royalty.

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Next week: Jane, Unlimited,  timeline-hopping, genre-hopping YA by Kristin Cashore.