Book Review: How to Train Your Dragon by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, "Translated" by Cressida Cowell

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Story will entertain the target audience

Cons: Not much for adults at all

The Bottom Line:

Dealing with dragons

Becomes an average plot

I enjoyed film more

Believe It or Not, the Movie is Better

Dragons.  Danger.  Fantasy Middle Ages.  What more could anyone look for in a book aimed at middle graders?  Unfortunately, when it comes to How to Train Your Dragon, these elements don’t quite come together.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is facing the worst moment of his life.  As a ten-year-old, it is time to be initiated into his tribe of Medieval Vikings.  And that means he has to sneak into a cave full of sleeping baby dragons and snag one.  Even if he and his fellow initiates manage to do that without waking the dragons, then he will need to train his dragon.  He’ll have just a few months to do that or face banishment.  Can he survive any part of this test?

For those, like me, who are reading this book after seeing the movie (or those who plan to see the film after reading this novel), know that the similarities between the two are superficial.  Character names are the same and some personalities as well, but the plot of the movie is very different from this book.  I don’t know how the series progresses, and maybe items from future books were factored into the film, but there was much of this book that was new to me.

Having said that, this book just didn’t grab me as much as I expected it to.  The plot is fairly predictable, which is never the kiss of death with me, but I need to be having fun along the way.  Here, it just felt like we went from one familiar plot point to another until we reached the climax.

The climax certainly did keep my attention, however.

For the most part, the characters weren’t developed.  Hiccup faired a bit better than most, but the rest of the cast were cardboard cutouts at best.  The exception for this is Toothless, the dragon that Hiccup is trying to train.  He is annoying, and I honestly wanted to jump into the story and shoot him myself.

I listened to the book on tape.  Gerard Doyle was the narrator.  He did a good job with the story, although his various characters did all begin to sound the same after a while.  Frankly, he was another reason I hated Toothless.  His voice for the dragon (and yes, a plot point is that Hiccup speaks dragon) was super annoying – almost whiney really.  It definitely grated on my nerves after a while.

It’s not that the book is bad, and I can certainly see middle schoolers enjoying it.  Dragons are always a draw, after all, right?  But I found the book average and will stick to the movie version of How to Train Your Dragon from here on out.