[Happy St. Patrick's Day/Guinness-Drinking Day to anyone reading this! (Is anyone reading this?) --S.]

I had never heard of this author when I saw Dragon’s Keep on the shelf, and I am almost embarrassed to admit that the main reason I bought the book was because it was a dollar. The cover isn’t much — just a hand with one finger replaced by a dragon’s claw, on a black background. There are some very faint dragons, but my dust cover is not terribly clean so I didn’t notice them at first. The inside blurb isn’t all that great, either — at the end of it, I was still confused as to whether it was a fantasy novel or a romance novel, and if it was a romance novel, I thought it sounded like a terrible one. Lucky for me, I did buy it, and I even took off the dust jacket and read it.

Fortunately, this book is just one more piece of evidence that I should perhaps stop judging books by their covers. To start, the actual book itself under the dust jacket is a very pretty shade of green, and has a nice pebbly texture. Next, the contents are wonderful. Rosie (Rosalind) is the crown princess of Wilde Island, a small independent kingdom off the coast of England. It is 1145 C. E., and she is fourteen. Her family line is descended from a sister of King Arthur’s, who ran away to marry the king of Wilde Island many years ago and was disowned. Merlin prophesied that the twenty-first queen of Wilde Island — that would be Rosie — would stop a war with a wave of her hand and restore the name of Pendragon. Therefore Rosie always must be perfect — except she isn’t. The fourth finger on her left hand (her wedding ring finger) is a dragon claw, and who would marry a princess with a devil’s mark? Rosie’s mother, the queen, spends a good deal of time trying to find ways to ‘cure’ her of this affliction, so she can marry Prince Henry of England.

Secondarily, there is a dragon terrorizing the countryside. The dragon comes and eats several villagers every few weeks, and thus far, the army’s efforts to kill it have been in vain. Many lives have been lost. Is there anything Rosie and her dragon claw can do about this?

This book had such lovely depth to it that I was amazed. On one level, it’s a historical fantasy. The Arthurian angle is a bit contrived; I would guess that if she had chosen to set this in a completely fantastic world and made the prophecy just a prophecy, it would have worked just as well. It is set in a castle with tapestries; there is a brief scene near the beginning with a louse in the princess’s hair, but it is not overwhelming. There was enough detail to invoke the Middle Ages without adding so much realism that it would throw readers out of the fantasy aspect.

On another level, it’s a fairy tale. There is an evil witch, and a betrayed best friend, and a beautiful mute servant, and a dragon, and a princess. The symbolic reality works just behind the surface events, and it should be apparent to most readers. I won’t go into many aspects of it, because it would give away too much of the plot, but there is a lovely scene wherein Rosie reflects on her name and her life to date, and how it has just changed so much that she has become no longer the flower, the rosebud, but the thorn.

Carey’s language makes no attempt to be historically accurate, but she uses some conventions of old-fashioned speaking to give a historical sense to her writing. While people say things like “mayhap” and “thee”, it isn’t overwhelming and shouldn’t be viewed as an author trying to write in dialect or Middle English. Rather, she uses the language as she does the historical details — enough to give the implication that what is happening is not happening NOW, but not so much that it ruins the fantastic effects.

Overall the book is a bit melancholy. Many people die, including quite a few who are very close to the princess. The dragon(s) eat a lot of people. Rosie herself is betrayed, lied to, and subjected to pain many times. It’s definitely a novel for more sophisticated readers, despite little gore and sex. Fans of Shannon Hale who especially loved Goose Girl would probably like this; even though I don’t recognize a fairy tale that it would have been based on, Dragon’s Keep and Goose Girl share many elements. (Again, I’d prefer not to go into them due to giving away a few key events in the plot.) I’ll give Dragon’s Keep 4.5/5 stars.