Chris d'Lacey

The Fire Within

The Fire Within is the opening book of Chris d’Lacey’s Last Dragon Chronicles. Interestingly enough, despite the series’ title, and the dragon on the cover, there are surprisingly few dragons in the book. In fact, one could make an argument that the dominant creatures are squirrels. Yes, squirrels. But somehow, it works (dragons play a much larger role in succeeding books).

The novel begins when David, a college student, takes a room with the Pennykettles — mother Liz and young daughter Lucy. Liz makes clay dragons in her upstairs studio, called the Dragon Den, and the house is filled with them. David finds the pair a bit odd, especially the way they speak of the dragons as if they were alive. When Liz makes David a special dragon, Gadzooks, which she claims will help him with his writing (and in fact it does inspire him to write a kid’s story for Lucy), things become even stranger and David begins trying to unravel the mystery surrounding the Pennykettles and their dragons. In many ways, this is secondary to the story David is writing about a sick squirrel, a story based on actual events — perhaps even predicting actual events — involving the mysteriously vanished squirrels that used to live in the Pennykettle yard, a crotchety neighbor who’d just as soon kill any squirrel he sees as save it, a young woman who works in an animal rescue shelter, and a fearsome crow.

I confess the focus on the squirrels took me by surprise, but nearly as surprising was how effective the squirrel story was. It does lend a younger-age feel to the book as a whole; I’d say it’s best suited for 8-10 year olds (younger kids would enjoy it read to them) despite its 300+ page length. The second novel, Icefire, is much more complex and mature, not to mention much more focused on the dragons themselves. And it appears, from what my nine-year-old says as he currently works his way through the series, that later books darken in tone and become more complicated.

The Fire Within, though, has a nice light touch; charmingly whimsical might be the best way to describe it. D’Lacey’s writing is simple but fluid, smooth, and quick-moving. The mystery is not particularly dark or suspenseful but is engaging. The main “villain” of the piece — the gruff next-door neighbor — makes a good villain for younger kids, but is actually out-menaced by the large crow. Characterization is slight, and Lucy gets a bit annoying, but with five more books, there is room for growth and development. The plot is perhaps a bit predictable in this first book, but d’Lacey veers away from where the reader might think things were going at the very end, and later books throw a few more curves. Structurally, d’Lacey does a nice job of mixing things up a bit by interweaving David’s squirrel story, and the backstory of the dragons via dreams and overheard conversations, with the more mundane real-time events. The mythic feel of the dragon history does a nice job of counterbalancing the lighter, younger storyline about the squirrels. I confess I wish d’Lacey had opted not to use names from the Arthurian legends; they are more distracting than evocative or effective. This borrowing of well-known names from legends and myths, a technique I’ve seen other writers use as well, seems a bit of a cheap way to lend a story some mythic “gravitas.”

As mentioned, the second story, Icefire, is heavier and darker in tone and is focused much more on dragons — it’s almost like a wholly different series. Most kids I think will be happy to keep reading, but The Fire Within stands up fine on its own as a younger YA book, so long as they don’t mind being left hanging about some of the dragon details. Recommended.

Review addendum by Bill's son, Kaidan Capossere, age 9:
I’d rank it a four. I thought it was good and suspenseful. I liked the characters, especially Lucy, David, and the dragons. My favorite part was when the squirrels, crow, and cat were fighting. I was surprised it was about squirrels and would have liked a little bit more about the dragons, though I didn’t mind that it was so much about squirrels. I liked learning about the early history of the dragons. It started a bit slow but picked up when they began trying to catch the squirrel. So far this is my third favorite (I’m on book five) of the series. Book two is my favorite, book five is great, and this one is almost as good as five.
—Bill and Kaidan Capossere

Icefire

Icefire is Chris d’Lacey’s second book in the Last Dragon Chronicles, following up on The Fire Within and continuing the story of David, the Pennykettles (Liz and Lucy), and the clay dragons that are much more than they appear. The Fire Within seems a wholly different construct from the succeeding novels — simpler, lighter in tone, feeling a bit younger in terms of target audience. Icefire begins the shift toward older, darker, more complicated storytelling.

Dragons play a much larger role in Icefire, as one might expect, and we start to get a sense of the clay dragons as distinct personalities. They still seem to lean a bit young to me in terms of readership, though one in particular faces some more mature, sophisticated moral choices. We learn more about the past history of dragons, the fate of the last dragon’s tear and what makes it so powerful. D’Lacey adds another thread to this history by introducing a small group of polar bears who somehow became guardians of the tear and are now taking an active role once again.

As David learns more about dragon history and slightly more about Lucy and Liz’s involvement with them, the Pennykettles become a bit more complex as characters. Meanwhile, we see another side of Mr. Bacon, the grouchy neighbor, who grows beyond the somewhat cardboard picture of him in The Fire Within. Relationships deepen and the story becomes more complicated with the addition of a new character, Zanna, a goth college student acquaintance of David’s who works her way into David and the Pennykettle’s lives. Another new character is one of David and Zanna’s professors, a man with a mysterious past and a possible link to the polar bears.

The character with the largest impact, however, is a long-lived witch named Gwilanna who lusts after the dragon’s tear and seemingly will do anything to find it. She is the major reason for the darker tone, as she provides an out-and-out villain. In The Fire Within, the “villain” was Mr. Bacon, a grumpy neighbor with a less than charitable view toward animals. Gwilanna is villainy on an entirely different scale: devious, cruel, deceptive, going so far as to manipulating minds and harshly interrogating a poor dragon.

Like The Fire Within, Icefire is a quick read, but d’Lacey has done a nice job of complicating plot, deepening characters, expanding story, heightening tension, and raising the stakes. It doesn’t have the whimsical charm of the first book, but it balances that loss in a variety of ways, making it a strong second book and one aimed at slightly older readers than the first book — probably up to age 12 or 13. Recommended.

Review addendum by Bill's son, Kaidan Capossere, age 9:
I’d rank Icefire a strong 4.5. I thought it was more suspenseful, though I would have liked less about the history because I thought it became a little repetitive, especially in later books. I liked that there were more dragons and not so much on squirrels. My favorite part was when the dragon G’reth and the cat Bonnington were working together to get the dragon’s scale from Gwilanna. The fact that there was a villain made it better. My favorite characters were the same as in the first book: Lucy, David, and the dragons. Zanna, though, was a much more interesting female character than Sophie in book one. She made the book better, especially in the fight with Gwilanna. It was unpredictable (especially the part about Sophie) and kept me on my toes enough to enjoy it. So far (I’m on book five) this is my favorite in the series. —Bill and Kaidan Capossere

The Fire Eternal and Fire Star

Books three and four in Chris d’Lacey’s The Last Dragon Chronicles are The Fire Eternal and Fire Star respectively. I’ve reviewed the first two separately, but as these two share many of the same problems, I’ve decided to review them together.

The first book, The Fire Within, introduced the major characters and the basic premise of the Last Dragon, Gawain, who died ages ago but whose lost Fire Tear might still play a role in today’s world. Connected, somehow, to that dragon are young Lucy Pennykettle and her mother Liz, who makes clay dragons, some of which are animate and have special powers. Their tenant David Rain gets mixed in with the dragon mystery, but mostly he and the others are involved in a plot about squirrels. This book is a bit of an outlier in the series, with very few dragons and a younger target age. The sequel, Icefire, keeps the focus squarely on the dragons. The plot becomes more mature and more complicated. We learn that there is a connection between dragons and polar bears and Gawain’s fire tear. A new love interest is added via Zanna, who turns out to be more than she first appears. And the book takes a darker turn with a full-fledged villain — Gwilanna — who seeks the fire tear for her own purposes.

Gwilanna continues to play a major role in Fire Star, kidnapping Lucy in an attempt to use her somehow in her plans to resurrect the long-dead Gawain. Zanna has also gone missing, disappeared somewhere in the Arctic where she and David had been working (David had returned due to Lucy’s abduction). G’reth, the wishing dragon, has also vanished, appearing in another dimension which is home to a transdimensional thought-based group known as the Fain, who have their own connections to dragons and to Earth and who may have decided to take interest and an active role once again. Unfortunately, the Fain have two factions and one, the Ix, doesn’t appear to wish Earth well. Meanwhile, David learns his writing (he’s working on a story involving polar bears and the Arctic) seems somehow to either predict near-future events or even possibly cause them; Liz’s long-lost love, Arthur, now a monk on a remote island, has discovered an ancient dragon relic and is having his own impact on time and events; and global warming is beginning to wreak havoc on the polar bear habitat which also happens to be where Gawain and his fire tear are.

The Fire Eternal picks up five years later with David, now a famous environmental author, having been missing ever since the close of Fire Star. The Ix have come up with a new and evil plan for Earth and for dragons; David and Zanna’s daughter Alexa is beginning to show signs of strange powers; a nosy journalist is trying to dig up just what really happened to David Rain; Gwilanna continues to plot; the weather is turning wild; and several groups: polar bears, the dragons of Wayward Crescent, the Pennykettles and David’s family, all must work together to stop a world-destroying calamity.

If that sounds like a lot is going on (and that’s not all of it) in these two books, well, a lot is going on in these two books. In fact, I’d argue way too much is going on. The plot complications in Icefire — the introduction of polar bears as guardians, Zanna as a new love interest, and Gwilanna’s plotting — did a nice job of adding tension and a darker, more mature tone to what had been a relatively charming but somewhat light concept. The plot was more involved, but still focused. In books three and four, however, the story feels like it is getting out of the author’s control somewhat. We’ve got extra dimensions, alien species, time manipulation, questions on cause and effect, characters vanishing left and right, zombie monks, didactic environmentalism (and I speak as someone who agrees with the general premise), characters and animals being possessed then unpossessed then possessed, plots within plots within plots, long-running complex set-ups, quantum physics, dark matter/dark energy, etc. That’s not even getting into the dragon mythology and history which gets layered upon again and again. It doesn’t feel particularly well thought-out. In fact, it feels a bit of a mess, and a bit like a stage set where it all looks good if you look at the front but take a closer look inside or behind and there isn’t much there. It’s exhausting to keep up.

Along with the basic problem of too much and too scattered plot, there are issues with pacing and plausibility, as well as a sense of arbitrary contrivance. Villains conveniently give up their whole plan because they’re “arrogant” and “know” the good folks can’t stop them. A character doesn’t reveal important information because “there was never any need to — before” or because he’d forgotten various things but his memory conveniently just “crystallized.” Magic becomes easier for characters when they need it to. Zanna has always been presented even before she knew about dragons as the goth girl with a sixth sense who believes in weird things, but she doesn’t think anything might be odd about the strange mark Gwilanna gave her that has never healed. David, who is supposed to be somewhat of a scientist, is surprisingly scientifically illiterate in basic cosmology. Meanwhile, other characters are conveniently well versed in physics, linguistics, or cosmology as needed. And so on. Suffice to say there are major plot holes or areas where the author’s manipulation is too strongly felt.

The characters are solid enough, if sometimes a bit slow on the uptake. Lucy remains a bit annoying, as she has been in previous books. The neighbor Henry, on the other hand, grows on the reader from book to book. The most interesting characters in many ways are the non-human ones, from Gwilanna (her unclear motivations and swinging back and forth between help and hindrance make her pleasantly complex) to the polar bears (a real sense of depth and dignity and a mostly wonderful sense of myth) to Bonnington the cat. Yes, the cat.

Finally, I’m not quite sure what the audience has become for these books. The first one, as mentioned, skews to the younger kids (8-10) with its focus on a sick squirrel and its overall light tone. Icefire clearly aimed higher with a more complicated and darker plot, though keeping younger elements such as the clay dragons and the simple characterization. But with books three and four, I’m not sure that most 10-13 year-olds are going to be able to follow the overly complex plot developments. Heck, I’m having a hard time following them. But while older kids may not have that issue (though I still think they’ll find it too much), it’s hard to imagine them responding well to the overly didactic plot, the relatively simple human characters, and the less-sophisticated nature of the clay dragons, which are kind of cutesy, to use a technical literary term (as opposed to the dragons of myth or the real dragons we start to see toward the end).

My own nine-year-old enjoyed book one, and found book two to be his favorite until he got to the fifth book. He didn’t (possibly couldn’t) finish Fire Star and didn’t care for much of The Fire Eternal, skimming the parts he didn’t like. I’m curious as to how book five got him back. Right now, I’m with him in that I’d say Icefire remains by far the strongest book — the most focused, the most tightly written. The Fire Eternal and Fire Star were a struggle to complete and I wish d’Lacey’s editor had told him he had lots of good ideas, but not all of them had to go into this series. Cutting out several plot lines, dropping about 200 pages from each book, and strengthening the characters would have served the story better, I think. At this point, the recommendation leans toward reading (or buying your kids) books one and two and stopping there, but we’ll see if d’Lacey redeems the series. —Bill Capossere