Amanda Craig reviews Cressida Cowell's newest installment to her dragon series, How to Speak Dragonese for the Times. How to Speak Dragonese is the third volume in the series following, How to Train Your Dragon and How to Be a Pirate. The first two volumes in this series have been published in the U.S. by Little, Brown.
Craig describes How to Train Your Dragon as "irresistibly funny, exciting and endearing." It "tells the tale of Hiccup the Useless, a nerdy Viking boy whose gigantic father Stoick the Vast is chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe living on the Isle of Berk. Despised by the other Vikings, Hiccup is even more wretched when he picks a runty, remorselessly selfish dragon, Toothless, to be his hunting beast. Little does he know that this is how he will become a dragon whisperer, something that will save his tribe when the monstrous Green Death rises from the seabed."
Amanda Craig's article is a nice long one with plenty of interesting details about the books and Cowell's approach to her subject.
