4.0
The Hero and the Crown
ByPublisher Description
Aerin is an outcast in her own father's court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her.
She makes friends with her father's lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father's library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat's weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .
But modern dragons, while formidable opponents fully capable of killing a human being, are small and accounted vermin. There is no honor in killing dragons. The great dragons are a tale out of ancient history.
That is, until the day that the king is riding out at the head of an army. A weary man on an exhausted horse staggers into the courtyard where the king's troop is assembled: "The Black Dragon has come . . . Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened."
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Hero and the Crown Reviews
4.0
Mari.F
Created 17 days agoShare
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“A reread from childhood! Ahhh I love Robin McKinley”
Emily Williams
Created about 1 month agoShare
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ZephyrStar
Created about 2 months agoShare
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“Okay, I didn't love The Blue Sword because I thought it was kind of boring. But I really liked this one! Following Aerin as she fights dragons was really cool, and I actually thought it was really cool that we wwitness our main character get horribly injured without any added romanticization or using it as fuel to piss off a male character.
The world was much more fun to read about in this one. A witch for a mother who ultimately rejected the princess MC? Dragons as vermin? Navigating politics and rumors? I also really liked the relationship she had with her horse.
Shockingly to me, I didn't really mind the incest. It wasn't anything too heavy handed and I actually really liked the cousin character.
What I didn't like was the last 3/4 of the book. This is what dropped my rating down from a 4. I found the larger magical scope not to be written as well. I also really didn't like Luthe, which isn't a shock because I didn't like him in The Blue Sword either. Something about reading a book that takes place later in the timeline makes your immortal character seem like not a very compelling love interest for your teenage MC.
This one was a fun read, and it really stands out to me in the way it portrays dragons. Aerin was a fun character who had a lot of shit going on and managed not to whine about it constantly. And for some reason the actual Blue Sword was way more fun in this book too.”
Emma Beachy
Created about 2 months agoShare
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Shelee Lovell
Created 3 months agoShare
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About Robin McKinley
Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for
, a Newbery Honor for
, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for
. Her other books include the
bestseller
; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast,
and
;
, another novel-length fairy-tale retelling, of Charles Perrault’s
; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend,
. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson; three dogs (two hellhounds and one hell terror); an 1897 Steinway upright; and far too many rosebushes.
Other books by Robin McKinley
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