From Publishers Weekly
Monkey opens this narration--part of the saga of the dragons' efforts to reclaim their home--where the events of Dragon Cauldron left off: he and his companions are captives of the Boneless King and the traitorous dragon Pomfret. After several escapes and skirmishes, they gather an army of dragons, defeat the King and reclaim the lost prince, their friend Thorn. Like its predecessors, this fantasy contains numerous inventive touches: the protagonists' changes of form--into horses and even fleas--enable them to elude the evil King; creatures such as the King's animate stone statues, and the fire-rats that scamper among them and heat the stone to breaking-point. The final battle, once joined, combines heart-stopping valor and fiendishly clever contests of wit. But the action to that point is overly drawn out, with a surfeit of near-climactic encounters and a few too many reversals of fortune. Further, readers new to the series may be confused by the characters' sketchy introductions and the complexity of past events alluded to but never clarified. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up-- The evil, immortal, Boneless King, inhabiting the body of the human tyrant, Butcher, has declared all-out war on dragonkind. In this concluding volume in the series, Shimmer, the dragon princess, and her friends join her beleaguered kin as they fight for their lives. Monkey, an ebullient trickster-hero from Chinese folklore, recounts harrowing captures; hairsbreadth escapes; clever ruses; vast battles on air, land, and sea; heroic sacrifices; and dizzying, sometimes confusing, shape changes. Thorn, the human boy who has been Shimmer's companion since Dragon of the Lost Sea (1982), who helped her regain the magic cauldron in Dragon Steel (1985), and who sacrificed his body to reforge the cauldron in Dragon Cauldron (1991, all HarperCollins), spends most of this book as the soul of the cauldron, an object of enormous power. With the help of some potent immortals, both Thorn and Shimmer regain their rightful heritage. While the swirl of inventive details may obscure the emotional trajectory, the story provides a rare glimpse of Chinese mythic patterns. Shimmer's adventures continue to emphasize group loyalty over personal honor, and conclude with an audacious scene portraying the ``many worlds of which ours is only one possibility,'' a concept rooted in Taoist and Buddhist thought. Because it would be hard to follow events and character changes without reading the earlier books, this one is recommended where the others have been enjoyed. --Margaret A. Chang, North Adams State College, MA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
