Title A Book Dragon Series --- Author Donn Kushner Cover Art James Warhola Publisher Avon Books - 1991 First Printing Henry Holt Company - 1987 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Nonesuch Main Elements Dragons

"Here there bee dragons..."

Even more important than besting knights of devouring maidens and livestock, a dragon's first priority is to guard something. Following the maxims learned as his grandmother's scaly knee, young Nonesuch has found his personal treasure - an exquistely illuminated manuscript created by a dedicated abbey monk. But an unorthodox turn of events has trapped Nonesuch within the pages of the very work he is sworn to protect - only to release him some 600 years later into a modern society sorely in need of a good dose of dragon-style justice...

I found it was a little hard to get into the story, the writing style was a little harder than more modern writing styles and it also tried to be kind of fairy tale like in the style. We start of learning about the dragons of the world, the classic maiden devouring, knight fighting, treasure guarding English kind. And then we have Nonesuch, trying to find his place in the world, one day discovering that he could control his size by how much he eats. Feeling that he currently wasn't the right size he tried shrinking till he was the size of a large insect.

At the same time he finds himself in an abbey where a monk is working on an illustrated manuscript. Now I love books, so I enjoyed the fact that Nonesuch decided that the treasure he would guard would not be gold but rather this beautiful book. The monk being aware of Nonesuch's presence paints him into the margins.

Then we just ahead 600 years with Nonesuch waking up from time to time, in one case to have a conversation with a rat in plague-ridden England but finally finding himself in an America bookstore. And the books don't end there, we get to meet the store's book-loving customers willing to fight to protect the store. And even the villain is a bibliophile who meets an appropriately draconic end.

Overall I enjoyed it but didn't love it. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I were younger when I read it first, even though this book doesn't have any of the regular YA or Middle Grade aspects like child protagonists (unless you count Nonesuch as a child). But the way it was written it was clearly intended for a younger audience. But any book focusing on books and dragons can't be bad and I'm glad I own a copy of this hard to find book. Though it's out of print, I found you can borrow it from Open Library.