Today’s book was the eighth book in the How to Train Your Dragon series, How to Train Your Dragon: How to Break a Dragon’s Heart (Young Adult 293 pages) by Cressida Cowell.

“Stranded on the exceptionally dangerous, and possibly haunted, Beach of the Broken Heart, Hiccup must face UG the Uglithug and complete the impossible task – or die trying. Along the way, he’ll have to battle Berserks, dodge Scarers, and save Fishlegs from being fed to the Beast, all while being hunted down by an old enemy with a dark secret about the mysterious Lost Throne. With Toothless by his side, and time to stage his rescue running out, what’s a Hero to do?”

I think this was probably the best book in this series for me so far. That’s probably because there’s a lot of emotionally charged parts of this book that deal with how history really isn’t anything like the fantasy stories read for entertainment purposes. In real history, bad things happen to the heroes and the stories that you hope don’t wind up being true about betrayal and selfishness are just a part of history. I guess that’s one of the biggest draws of reading fantasy and other genre fiction – for just a little bit, the reader can be transporter to a world where dragons exist and the characters are heroes who make positive change into the world in which they live.

But the real world isn’t like that.

There is a story of deeply bonded friendship in this novel and it’s a very moving story to read because it talks about family and hope and believing the best in people can change the world. There is also the opposite which happens in this book where believing the worst in people or misunderstandings can create horrible events that hurt everyone involved.

I’m not really going to say much more about this book because I don’t want to give any spoilers away. I did enjoy it overall and would probably rate it as a minimum of a high three on my rating scale. I’m glad I own it and I am highly likely to reread this book in the future, even if I don’t reread other books in the series first.

Cowell, Cressida. How to Train Your Dragon: How to Break a Dragon’s Heart. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.