About.com Rating



Harcourt, October 2012

Wizards! Magic! Dragons! The Last Dragonslayer is a young adult urban fantasy tale in which Jasper Fforde places the power of sorcery in the alternative modern-day setting of the Ununited Kingdoms, where a largely non-magic populace has little to no regard for the few practitioners of the mystical arts who remain now that magic is ebbing like a battery on its final charge and the wizards who once controlled the tides have been relegated to contracting out for home improvement projects, removal of illegally-parked cars, and pizza delivery.

Fforde's protagonist is Jennifer Strange, a 15-year-old foundling who is serving out the final two years of her indentured servitude to Kazam Mystical Arts Management, where she is part employment agent and part house mother to a motley (and rather unstable) collection of sorcerers, soothsayers, shapeshifters, and various other magically-inclined persons. Assisting Jennifer is Tiger Prawns, another indentured servant recently arrived from the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster orphanage, and the Quarkbeast, a wholly intimidating animal who, with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, is commonly known to have the ability to chew through a school bus lengthwise in under eight seconds. While the Quarkbeast wouldn't hurt a fly (unless of course the fly had malicious intentions towards Miss Strange), its intimidating "open knife-drawer on legs" appearance comes in handy as Jennifer finds herself in increasingly more dire circumstances.

And circumstances do get dire. While trying to keep Kazam afloat in a period of magical decline, Jennifer must also deal with the matter of Maltcassion, an ancient dragon, and the recent premonition of his imminent demise at the hands of (who else?) the last dragonslayer, which sets into motion an avaricious land-grab of the Dragonlands on the part of the general public, the rumblings of war at the hands of the despotic King Snodd, and - not to be discounted - BIG MAGIC.

Crafted as it was for a YA audience, The Last Dragonslayer feels a bit breezier than something like Shades of Grey, with its fully fleshed-out world-building and deep characterization. In this novel, Fforde is spare in these departments; it's a short read (287 pages with large print and wide margins), and Fforde dives directly into the action with light thematic attention to societal-greed, destiny, and mammalian-centric thinking. Bearing this in mind however, The Last Dragonslayer holds together extremely well, with Fforde's signature silliness and humor shot throughout.

Fforde wrote The Last Dragonslayer in 1996, but failed to find a publisher for the novel at the time. Just after 2000, when he published The Eyre Affair, the Harry Potter series was hitting its meteoric stride and Fforde’s publisher advised holding off on The Last Dragonslayer (similarly a magic and orphan with destiny novel) lest he appear to be a "me-too" author. Finally published in the U.K. in 2010, The Last Dragonslayer was so well-received that Fforde was asked to make a series of it, and the second book of the trilogy, The Song of the Quarkbeast, has been published in the U.K. and is scheduled to hit the U.S. in early 2013.

For me, Fforde remains a ffavorite author, whose books I will readily press into the hands of my ffriends and acquaintances (and sometimes strangers). In fact, the only thing that’s stopped me from picking up The Eyre Affair (and the subsequent six books in the Thursday Next series) is my non-acquaintance with Jane Eyre, though considering that I will have to wait until 2015 to read the Shades of Grey prequel (see our interview with Jasper Fforde), I may just give it a go.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.