Title: THE SAINT OF DRAGONSAuthor: Jason HightmanPages: 364(Paperback)Rating: 4/5“Another dragon book,” you grumble. I nod and grin, “of course!”Thursdays always catch me unawares so this book will again be aimed at a younger audience but I recommend it to everyone with a love of fantasy. Highly. What, you don’t believe in dragons? By the time you finish this book, trust me you will. And since I love the synopsis too much to make up my own, read on:You’ve been taught to believe they are dead. Figments of an ancient imagination. But one lonely schoolboy at the Lighthouse School for Boys, who has never known his family, and who has never known adventure, is about to have a rude awakening.Dragons are real. And they have … evolved.Two descendants remain of the legendary St. George. One is just a teenager. And only they can destroy the dragons that plague the world.I read this while on an extremely long car ride that passed far to fast for me. I finished this book and was in awe. You think that, after reading so much fantasy you know all the kinds of dragons there are. You don’t, not until you read The Saint of Dragons.Hightman begins with an introduction which is highly unusual but it works marvelously, setting high expectations. The first chapter is a fine beginning but not yet engaging. It’s the second chapter and on that you give your full attention to the story. What happens when you become the last knight and the responsibility as a parent falls like a slap? Meet Aldric St. George, the father or young Simon.I enjoyed the bickering and eventual relationship between father and son. It’s fun to see Simon struggle to rise to his father’s standards and make a mess of things. Not to mention accidentally use his father as a pincushion as they encounter and fight the highly individual Dragons. The Paris Dragon is my favorite. Well one of them.You get to travel the world with the St. Georges in their triumphs and (mostly) failures. Along the way they pick up the gifted Alaythia and more or less keep the Dragons from… wait no, I’ll let you read it for yourself.This is a fabulous adventure fantasy book but it isn’t the typical black and white scenario. Jason Hightman is smart enough to add those shades of grey often lacking in great fantasy stories. The story continues in Samurai which I have not had the pleasure to read but you can definitely just read The Saint of Dragons and come away fully satisified.
Simon St. George has been raised by his school, but learns he is the last of a long line of St. Georges, whose mission is to wipe Dragons from the face of the earth. He's not sure what to make of his father, a man completely dedicated to exterminating the beasts, or himself and his own role in this hunt. His father is not what he had expected, nor anything he had hoped. But the world is in danger, and Simon, his father, and a woman they rescue are the only ones standing between the Dragons and the rest of humankind.The book did an excellent job portraying the tumultuous relationship between Simon and his father. Aldric is so dedicated to his mission he's gone more than a little insane, and Simon has to wrestle with that as he tries to see past the barriers to the man underneath. Alaythia's involvement was much more predictable, but still interesting in the context of Aldric's fanaticism.Things not handled as well are harder to pinpoint, but definitely there. The way the book kept pushing Dragons as totally evil irritated me, although the end brought up the question of whether not-so-evil Dragons could really exist. There were really big holes in some of the logistics of the fights themselves: just how did they get a horse into some of the places she goes, particularly without anyone noticing? And who were the other Knights at the beginning? Cousins?The ending left me really puzzled. Alaythia, apparently without ever learning anything about magic, manages to re-sink the most powerful Dragon in existence. Granted, she had help in the form of the chaos everyone else had sparked, but that bit just felt way too cheesy and contrived.Perhaps it's my own love of dragons that soured the book for me, or perhaps it was the book's heavy-handedness in denouncing every single Dragon as evil, period. They had enough free will to go a little more against the grain. Although I liked some parts of it, overall I just wasn't impressed. Neutral.
Do You like book The Saint Of Dragons (2004)?
I got this book for my birthday from my cousin and he is one of the smartest people I know so when I got the book I was expecting it to be at least decent. It starts of introducing the main character Simon who's been orphaned and lives in a light house but soon his dragon hunting dad needs his help because his comrades died in the battle with the second last to dragon. Now Simon was not happy about this but his dad kidnapped him and set off for the dragon. Now right about here the book gets good, I can't say anything else with out spoiling anything. This book taught me that maybe humans aren't all bad, maybe something is forcing them to be.
—Anthony Bonventre
In this book you are taken through the story of the St. George's. They are a group of undercover knights that protect the world from dragons. The main plot of this story is that over thousands of years dragons have evolved into dragon-people. They still have fire breath and magic but this book puts a whole new interesting twist to it. Dragons use their magic to disguise themselves as people. When they walk around, they wear long trench coats but to humans are only see as tall men or women. In this book you learn all about how the dragons magic leaks out causing ripples in nature, and how dragon fire has a mind of its own. You also learn how the dragons feed on people's misery. But mainly you are taken through the journey of Simon St. George. He is a boy who lives in a boarding school with the groundskeeper and his wife. He never met his real parents, until one day Aldric St. George(his father) goes on a hunt with his brother and 2 other knights. This takes a turn for the worse when the dragon causes a giant explosion that kills his brother and the two others. He finds the skull of the dragon who says to him that we know about the kid. This is when Aldric picks up Simon to train him to hunt. He explains to simon how there is only one dragon left, and he didn't want to drag his son into his lifestyle. they go to hunt the last dragon in Manhattan. This dragon was about to kill a woman named Alaythia, which is the dragon ritual for marriage. After they defeat the dragon they find out that there is another dragon out there. They have a book called the Black Book of the St. George, and this gives them the name, location, and deathspell of the dragons. So they go to hunt down this dragon with Alaythia, who made a decision to help them anyway she can. When they find its lair Alaythia gets a near death experience that makes her able to read the dragon language. She is able to read a map that leads them to discover Whit Book of St. George. In there is a list of hundreds of dragons just like the black book. They also discover a plot in which All the dragons plan to gather. They foil their plan and find a nice house near the Lighthouse school for boys to spend the rest of their life.
—John Pristina801
I had to read this in my language arts class and I had my suspicions since the book is a fantasy, which is not my kind of genre. After reading this book though I do realize that there is such thing as a good fantasy! Jason Hightman had wonderful detail in this book and there wasn't a dull part in the story. I am definitely going to read the second book and I hope it is as wonderful as the first one. The reason why I loved this book is that each person (and dragon) actually had emotion which is what many books fail to have. It also had enough detail but not so much that it put me to sleep. all in all this was a great story and I would recommend this title to almost anyone.
—Garrison
