How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury Brings Cressida Cowell’s Series to a Triumphant End

Hiccup’s early adventures are great fun for young readers of 8 or so; there’s slapstick adventure, highly unlikely twists of fate, and snot jokes. Hiccup, scrawny and unferocious, is an improbable Viking; unlike his cousin Snotlout, a bullying thug, Hiccup just doesn’t seem to have the qualities of a chieftain, even though he is the son of a chief. Even his hunting dragon, Toothless, is, as his name indicates, a bit of a joke.
As the series progresses, the light humor of the first books becomes mixed with more serious though still entertaining storylines, as Hiccup must repeatedly foil the evil schemes of Alvin the Treacherous, who has more lives than a cat, and whose ambitions know no bounds. The stakes get even higher when Hiccup, moved by compassion, frees the dragon Furious in the 8th book (How to Break a Dragon’s Heart), setting in motion a war between dragons and humans that lays waste to his world.  The only way to set things right is for Hiccup to find the lost treasures of King Grimbeard the Ghastly, and become King himself, using his kingly power to broker a peace with the dragons.

But though the lost items fall into Hiccup’s hands throughout the books, his quest is dogged by bad luck, and when Book 12 begins, Hiccup is a castaway on an island of deadly dragons with no memory of who he is, and the fang of a Vampire Spydragon embedded in his arm and poisoning him. Alvin the Treacherous, in the meantime, has stolen all the lost treasures, and is well on his way to becoming king.
Fans of the series, and Hiccup’s friends, should know by now not to give up hope; Hiccup is not only lucky (he has to be, to survive all terrible things that happen to him), but he is also indomitable. He doesn’t particularly want to be a king, but he desperately wants to save the dragons from extinction, which is Alvin’s plan, and he wants to bring slavery, of both humans and dragons, to an end in the Viking lands. His optimism and goodness of heart makes him determined to hope for the best in the many hurdles he encounters. Furious has become a rampaging monster, but Hiccup clings to his belief that talking is better than fighting. And he is right; in the end, love wins.

During this series, Hiccup journeys from a scrawny boy whom no one thinks will amount to much, to a true hero, who never gives up, and never stops believing that he can make the world better. Kids who begin the series for its entertainment value when they are young like Hiccup (wondering how to win their parents’ approval, keep themselves safe from bullies, and meet the expectations of society), will find themselves emotionally hooked even as the themes of the stories become more weighty. The bittersweet end of How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury, with its echoes of issues facing our own world, will hit home hard. Without valuing friendship and loyalty, respect and compassion, and without overcoming intense physical suffering, Hiccup could never have succeeded, and so by its end the books have become much more than light comedy with occasional snot jokes. They have become the chronicle of a true hero.
Still, this isn’t to say that the book is all dark and serious—fans of the series will continue to find Toothless, in particular, just as amusing as he was at the beginning!
How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury is on shelves November 3.