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240 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 1990
"He doesn't seem very impressed," Cimorene commented in some amusement.Before Harry Potter, there was Princess Cimorene, a dragon named Kazul, and the Enchanted Forest. I am no longer a 11-year old girl. I am a grown-ass woman, and I still love this book as much as I did the first time I read it.
"Why should he be?" Kazul said.
"Well, you're a dragon," Cimorene answered, a little taken aback.
"What difference does that make to a cat?"
All in all, Linderwall was a very prosperous and pleasant place.Her older sister are all lovely and ladylike, each more beautiful than the last. Cimorene is not. She's too tall. Her hair is frizzy and brown. She's stubborn (on a good day). And she just won't stop learning inappropriate things. Magical lessons. Fencing. Fighting. Latin. All lessons that her disgruntled parents abruptly put a stop to once they find out, cause it just ain't proper for a princess, yo. And her fairy godmother is as useful as brains on a Kardashian.
Cimorene hated it.
"It has to do with status. Dragons aren't required to have princesses, you see. Most of us don't. There are never enough to go around, and some of us prefer not to have to deal with the annoyances that come with them."Fortunately, thanks to her education, she is as well-equipped to cataloguing draconian libraries as well as she is whipping up an excellent dessert (Cimorene specializes in making cherries jubilee).
"Knights," Cimorene guessed.
"Among other things," Kazul said, nodding. "So having a princess in residence has become a minor mark of high status among dragons."
"A minor mark?"
Kazul smiled. "I'm afraid so. It's the equivalent of, oh, serving expensive imported fruit at dinner. It's a nice way of showing everyone how rich you are, but you could make just as big an impression by having some of those fancy pastries with the smooth glazed icing and spun-sugar roses."
"I'm Cimorene," Cimorene said. "I don't need comforting, and I'm not particularly sad or sorry to be here, but if you'd like to come in and have some tea, you're welcome to."...among whom she unexpectedly finds a good friend, and dealing with, among other things, a jinn, a killer bird, a witch with many cats (or more appropriately, cats and their witch), and some wascally wizards. There is magic. There is mystery. There is a potential threat to the dragons for whom Cimorene has come to care deeply.
The first two princesses looked as if they would have liked to be startled and appalled by this announcement but were much too well bred to show what they were feeling.
“The rest of my classmates are already making names for themselves. George started killing dragons right away, and Art went straight home and pulled some sort of magic sword out of a rock. Even the ones nobody expected to amount to much have done something. All Jack wanted to do was go back to his mother’s farm and raise beans, and he ended up stealing a magic harp and killing a giant and all sorts of things. I’m the only one who hasn’t succeeded.”
“I didn’t ask what you’d said about it,” the frog snapped. “I asked what you’re going to do. Nine times out of ten, talking is a way of avoiding doing things.”
“I’d much rather have good teeth than have diamonds and roses drop out of my mouth whenever I said something,” Cimorene said. “Think how uncomfortable it would be if you accidentally talked in your sleep! You’d wake up rolling around on thorns and rocks.”