The Dragondain

Richard Due's The Dragondain is a fantasy adventure for 9 year olds that begins with a boy landing in another world in his underwear.

What happens

Jasper wakes up flat on his back in what turns out to be an enormous bird's nest. His sister Lily had been shaking him awake and saying something about going back somewhere. He threw her out of his room and went back to sleep. So he is quite certain this is a dream.

Which means he behaves like a boy in a dream. He tries willing clothes into existence. He swats at the pendant round his neck, catches himself on the temple with it and sees stars. Then he climbs out and finds a swamp lit by a dozen bonfires, and hundreds of Rinn.

The Rinn are huge cats with manes like fire, and they carry bows on their backs with arrows the length of spears. A tall blue bird called Aleron introduces their queen. Jasper, still convinced none of it is real, more or less says so to her face.

She does not take it well. "Am I to understand that you think me a dream?"

That's the joke running under the whole opening. Everyone around him is at war, in a hurry and deadly serious, and he keeps pinching his own arm to check.

The big cat behaviour is lovely. One enormous Rinn spends a scene tracking a moth round a bonfire with his back end swaying, then sits bolt upright looking dignified the moment he realises he's been spotted.

You should know this one comes second, and it shows. Lily has already made the journey. The Rinn have already met her and keep asking where she is. Uncle Ebb and his bedtime stories are the reason Jasper can name all nine moons without being told. Your reader can follow it cold, but they'll be joining a conversation that started somewhere else.

One smaller thing. This is an American edition, so it's sneakers and pants and gray skies throughout. Nothing a child will trip over for long, but it does sound American on the page.

What to read next

If they like Jasper and want the start of it, Lily's story in The Moon Coin is where to go. That's the one where Uncle Ebb goes missing and the coin out of his bedtime tales turns out to work.