How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

7:33 am 14 September 2014
How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse - Cressida Cowell

Okay, slight error in my last review of this series. David Tennant was in the How to Train Your Dragon movie. BUT IN A REALLY SMALL ROLE.

 

To remedy this insult, I propose he voices all the characters for the next movie. It'll be a lot cheaper.

 

But back to the series. David Tennant is a great narrator as usual.

 

In this book, it calls back to the previous one in which at the end a venomous vorpal bit one of the main characters. Being bit by a venomous vorpal means that you get vopantitis which is fatal. But it numbs you before it bit which means you wouldn't know if you were bit and its effects can take up to a few months to make themselves known.

 

In this case, Old Wrinkly diagnoses Hiccup's friend Fishlegs with vorpantitis and gives him approximately 15 hours to live. But there is a rumored cure. The vegetable which cannot be named (Potato) from the mythical land of America (which wouldn't be named that for a few hundred years but just go with it).  With the possibly not real potato and the mythical land a few thousand miles away if it does exist, Hiccup has to come up with a new plan.

 

Luckily, the Hysterics, a nearby tribe is rumored to have a potato. Hiccup teams up with Camicaze (who I love) again, his usually useless dragon Toothless, and One-eye, the Saber-Toothed Driver dragon, who isn't sure if he likes Hiccup, to go to the Hysterics and bring back the potato.

 

The leader of the hysterics is Norbert the Nut-Job, who is as described, crazy. He carries an axe with one side gold and the other black and uses it as a coin flip to make decisions. He refuses to give the potato to Hiccup. Said potato has been frozen with the body of his father (for approximately 15 years) and has an arrow stuck in it. His father foretold that whoever can pull the arrow from the potato will defeat the Doomfang, a dragon which has forced the Hysterics to stay on their island. Hiccup suggests that they just heat the potato up to take out the arrow. His suggestion doesn't go over well.

 

Overall, a really fun and exciting entry to this series. I am forcing myself to listen to at least one other book inbetween, but it gets hard sometimes. I love listening to the series.

 

One spoilery note for the series:

 

 

So Hiccup ends up saving the Doomfang (though not on purpose) and reflects in the end of the book that the Doomfang ended up protecting his ship on future voyages as an adult in payment. I've read that Cressida Cowell said that at the end of the series we will find out why there are no more dragons in the world (and apparently the movie will do this as well).

 

I don't know how long the series will go for, and how old Hiccup will be, but this seems to imply that it won't be until adulthood that the dragons will disappear. In the movie, Hiccup is already an adult. The first three books had a year in between each one, but this took place a few months after the third and he's only 12. Any theories?

(show spoiler)

 

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