I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons - Review
I recently finished I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by the legendary Peter S. Beagle.
Cover for the book I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle.
I grew up watching The Last Unicorn animated film. I had no idea that it was a book until I started working at B&N when I went to college. I found the book on the shelf, promptly bought it, read it, and fell in love all over again. (For what it’s worth it is one of the closest movie adaptations of a novel that I’ve ever seen.) The story was incredibly influential to me growing up, and I think shaped a lot of how I craft my own creative work.
Even though they were published 56 years apart The Last Unicorn and I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons have Beagle’s same sense of magic and wonder. It’s something I think I want to call “Near Fantasy”. The worlds of The Last Unicorn and I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons both feel like they could have happened in our own past. It feels close, but just out of reach. Almost like a dream.
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons starts out ordinarily and innocently enough. In the quaint country of Bellemontagne we meet Robert, a dragon exterminator who hates his job and wants nothing more to do with it. Princess Cerise who is sick of princes fawning over her and who is determined to be the heroine of her own story, and Prince Reginald, who hates living under the crushing expectations of his tyrant father and wishes to escape the life of a prince.
Robert, Reginald, and Cerise end up facing an evil wizard, dragons a-plenty, and even their own self doubts as well as the expectations of people most important to them.
I felt like I had a good idea of how these character arcs were going to go, but I was pleasantly surprised by some unique twists. I think part of the what makes Beagle’s writing feel so profound is that the story and the characters seem simple at first, but the more you read, the more you realize he explores some fairly philosophical quandaries like learning to accept who we really are, finding our purpose in life, struggling against the weight of the expectations of our parents, and learning to understand and accept the difference between what we think we want in life vs what we need. There is a lot to unpack in the subtext if you look for it.
“Then he said quietly, “I don’t want to be a hero. Heroes kill things. I want to be *ordinary*—never mind Vardis, never mind my mother. I just want to have an ordinary life.””
I’ll be intentionally vague so as not to give much away, but there may be mild spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.
This is a pretty quick read and worth it. I was surprised by the character arcs. Out of all the characters in this book, by the end, I think Robert resonated with me the most. Which surprised me, I generally identify with the independent princess type like Cerise, but not so much in this case.
Robert, having inherited the job of his father as the local dragon exterminator, is needed but despised by his fellow townsmen. (Dragons in Bellamontagne are usually no bigger than a house cat, and are akin to mice and rats in their nuisance to the citizens, living in the walls, chewing up grain, starting small fires, etc.) Robert hates killing dragons. He dreams of leaving his life and becoming a valet for a prince in order to travel around and see the world. He rails against his own nature for much of the book, and only in the end when he accepts his natural gifts and embraces who he is (someone who does not want to kill dragons) is he able to flourish.
Princess Cerise is a little self-absorbed at the start, but gains some wisdom and maturity throughout the story, especially when some of her decisions have very dire consequences. I was pleasantly surprised that there were, in fact, very real and costly consequences for some of her decisions in the book. In some ways I expected Beagle to give her a pass and due to the dream-like, somewhat fairytale nature of his story avoid painful and deadly outcomes. But quite the opposite, he does not shy away from it at all. Cerise remains true to her core character till the end though, determined to teach herself to read and write, as well as to have her own adventure. She is a strong, independent princess who gains valuable life experience over the course of the book.
Prince Reginald I related to the least. He’s a handsome prince, perfect in every way, except that he doesn’t want to be a prince and he’s a little bit of a coward. His father is a tyrant conqueror and Reginald despises the idea of filling those shoes. A lot of Reginald’s arc involves standing up to his father, coming into his own as a man, and finding his own courage.
Oddly, one of the things I really like about Beagle’s writing is that he does not take the time to establish rules of magic or do a lot of in depth world building as compared to some authors like, say, Sanderson. This plays into that near fantasy feeling I was talking about earlier. The characters themselves often don’t understand the magic, but just sort of accept it as something that exists and in this case must be overcome. Beagle tells us only the bare minimum of what we need to know about Bellamontange and it works well with his style of story-telling. It doesn’t detract from the story, he tells us only as much as we need to know and nothing we don’t. I myself am quite long winded and want to know everything about everything, so when an author pulls this off I find myself very impressed by it. And of course, I enjoy Beagle’s prose.
“The last words snapped like pine sap in a fire. Dahr’s chuckle deepened and darkened as he savored the fear on the Princess’s face, but it stopped altogether when he turned toward Robert. “Well,” he said softly, his voice caressing the one word until it hummed and rang like the polished edge of a wineglass. “Well,” he repeated. “You.””
What I really want to talk about most in regards to Beagle’s work is the one thing I find myself having the hardest time articulating. There is something in Beagle’s work that leaves me with a sort of feeling of wonder and sad nostalgia. I find both The Last Unicorn and I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons to be somehow cozy and hopeful and bittersweet all wrapped into one. I feel something akin to melancholy when I finish reading them. But I love the story of The Last Unicorn so deeply, and I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons lands similarly. Perhaps it is the idea that magic really could be out there somewhere, and that it finds ordinary people and changes their lives forever. His works don’t feel epic and sweeping, (which I usually like), rather I think they feel ordinary and close to home and within reach.
Whatever it is, I adore Beagle’s work. His stories have firmly lodged themselves in my heart and I will continue to be inspired by them. I’m so thankful for his writing such wonderful and beautiful fantasy.
(It goes without saying, 🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞/5)
Till next time dear reader, I hope you are able to find something magical about the world you are in and treasure that every day magic. <3 Tiff
