Today I finished a series that I started when I was ten years old: "How to Train Your Dragon". At first it's a weird choice of a book series to follow after 11 years (the only comparable book I have to that kind of loyalty is Harry Potter), but honestly these books are something special.
I don't recommend starting with them if you're an adult and you immediately dismiss them as "for kids" because of the amount of pictures, fart jokes, and general silliness that happens in the books. It's a series clearly meant for children, but if you can look past the dressings the books are actually quite good. The amount of nostalgia and respect I have for them is quite high (it would have to be to stick with them for so long). I own every copy (except for book 4, which was actually one of my favourites), and through it all I've gained an appreciation in gauging my own "level" of readership.
When I first started the series I found the book "How to Be a Pirate" in Mrs. Daniels' class. I thought it was extremely funny, and I quickly devoured the other two books which were released at the time. However, since growing up I have a new appreciation for the series and children's books in general. I have been swept up in Hiccup's adventures as a child and adult. And as an adult, I can happily say the ultimate framework of the story is solid moral work. It's a work which contains messages about love, friendship, reconciliation, and what it really means to be a hero.
The fantasy is not unlike Tolkien's great works about a by-gone age where dragons existed before humans took over as leaders of the age (it also mimics Tolkien in that both books pretend to be a true historical account). But "How to Train Your Dragon" is masked under absurdist characters and situations unlike "Lord of the Rings".
I am happy to say the 12th and final instalment had an enormous payoff that I had been waiting for over a decade (and it didn't disappoint). Just like any great work, the underlying moral message was powerful, true, and reinforced by the narrative's twists and turns. It adhered to all the western rules of fantasy and logic that work to forward a message of love, with childlike humour and whimsical narrative to dress it up.
(It is also worth noting here that I love the films as well [although they are extremely different from the books], which is an unusual occurrence for me since I normally maintain that the books are better.)
Thus the series (whether in print or on screen) has always held a special place in my "favourite works list". Whenever I went to a bookshop I always made sure to go to the children's section to see if another instalment of Hiccup's adventures was in - excited to see if I would once again be swept up in the antics of the unlikely Hero of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. And now it's over. There's a second great feeling of nostalgia and loss of childhood I had today after finishing the novel which perfectly coincided with my trip back home to Oregon (before I take the leap and officially move to New York), so my feelings were definitely all over the place. But I'm happy to have a definite sense of beginning and end, (which mirrors one of the big themes of the last book and work as a whole), wrapped up in hope for Tomorrow.
5 stars. A must read series for young and old. Also, if you're into audio books, David Tennant narrates this one. How can you not want to read it?
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