From: Annette Goldsmith <ayg>
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:28:37 -0400

Since we're almost out of time for this discussion, I wanted to make sure we didn't miss The Last Dragon, by Silvana De Mari (Hyperion/Miramax.) This gently humorous fantasy about Yorsh, the last of his people (the elves), and his quest to fulfill a prophecy that ties him to the last dragon, is full of compassion. When Yorsh is still a child (as he says, "one born lately") he is helped by two humans, who ordinarily loathe and fear the elves. Yorsh himself faithfully tends an ungrateful, querilous old dragon, and later understands the full import of his task. Another major theme is that of developing tolerance through cross-cultural communication. Oh, and for those of you who collect books with librarian characters, Yorsh spends 13 years as a librarian! The educated Yorsh (he's had 13 years to read all the books in a well-stocked library) is disdainful of the dragon's passion for "really stupid" love stories. He offers the following critique of a book of dragonology: "But it gave neither the scientific name nor the common name of the fish in question. As a book, it was seriously lacking." (p. 148) Yorsh is also a gifted storyteller, a skill that comes in handy at a crucial moment.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but for a number of reasons I think the destruction of the elves, a learned people forced by humans into essentially death camps, where they wore uncomfortable yellow clothing, can stand in for the Jews of the Holocaust. I'd like to hear your comments about this in particular, and about the book in general.

Annette
Received on Sun 18 Mar 2007 04:28:37 PM CDT