Fires’ Astonishment by Geraldine McCaughrean
It’s an adult story about a duke’s son whose evil stepmother turns him into a dragon, and it’s mainly based on medieval poetry. This serves as the foundation for the tiny planet and very small society where the various characters interact. The son’s fiancée, who will no longer be able to wed him because he has mysteriously disappeared, the duke, and the evil stepmother are all present at the same time as the dragon. So she marries an older man, and you already know that this is going to end poorly. However, it doesn’t. It actually works and develops into a rather lovely romance.
Fires' Astonishment by Geraldine McCaughrean
Amazon.com
Geraldine McCaughrean has published 180 books for adults and children as well as 15 plays and other short play scripts for schools. Peter Pan in Scarlet, one of the most well-known and popular children’s novels of 2006, is among the books in the collection.
Geraldine McCaughrean has received numerous awards, including the Carnegie Medal twice, the Whitbread Children’s Book Award three times, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Smarties Bronze Award four times, the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, and the Blue Peter Special Book to Keep Forever Award. She has also had eight titles shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, including the two winners, with the most recent being Where The World Ends, which also received the Independent Bookshops’ Award.
She has two Michael L. Printz Awards from the United States.
Geraldine McCaughrean never ceases to surprise you. She has a knack for completely upending your expectations. As a writer who spends a lot of time reading and thinking about stories, I usually can predict what will happen next, but with Geraldine McCaughrean, I find it difficult to do so. She regularly astounds me, and that is also true in this book.
She had the best dragon ever as well. It’s the literary dragon I love the most. The strongest dragon is this one. She does a fantastic job of describing it, including the scent and itchy scales that make it feel like a genuine living thing.
There isn’t much magic involved. It’s basically this huge, mildly scary animal, and because he is imprisoned inside of it, the elderly son and heir is gradually turning into a dragon rather than a human. He runs into a failed monk, who grudgingly becomes his companion as they continue their journey together.
