Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley. Contemporary young adult fantasy.
From a writer known for her third person re-tellings of classic fairy stories with female lead characters comes a first person, entirely new, Fantastique (to use a Gaiman-ism) story whose protagonist is a 14 year old boy.
Jake Mendoza lives at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies in Smokehill National Park. He is a teenage boy living in the last place in the world that has dragons. There are other dragon reserves in the world but Smokehill is the best. Jake has reached his coming of age in the park. He is allowed to go on a solo, overnight, backpacking trip deep into the park. On this trip Jake finds a dragon who has been mortally wounded by a poacher and beside her the only living dragonlet from her newborn brood.
The Institute is set up to study dragons and the Park is set up to protect dragons from poachers but the researchers are legally prohibited from assisting dragons. Jake is unable to resist the urge to help the baby dragon. He scoops her up and takes her with him. The rest of the book is Jake’s first hand account of trying to raise a dragonlet with no idea if you are helping or hurting it.
This book feels like a luxury for McKinley. She is finally established enough for her publisher to take a chance on a book diverges radically from her previous material. If you read her blog the origin of the writing style is very clear. This is McKinley’s voice slightly glossed to be Jake Mendoza. As the character the voice is slightly more frenetic and uses fewer footnotes.
This is such a jarring departure from McKinley’s usual style that fans of her other books might not like it. However, it still hews closely to the overarching theme of her bibliography: the personal experiences at the core of momentous events.
-fh