My Five Favourite Dragons in Literature

When someone asks me what my favourite genre is, I always reply with: “As long as it has a dragon in it, I’ll read it.” I don’t know what it is about these scaly reptilians that I love so much, but they fascinate me. Winged, wise and sometimes wicked, I can’t resist a good dragon story.

Hear me roar! © lin wu / ArtStation

So here are five of my favourite dragons. For this list I stuck to named dragons only and I left out any from books that I haven’t read in years and can’t remember well (such as George RR Martin’s dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire), and there are many that probably deserve to be on the list but that I haven’t been acquainted with yet. Most importantly, the dragon has to have personality like any other character to make this list.

Without further ado, here are my top five literary dragons:

Temeraire – Temeraire (Naomi Novik)
Who doesn’t immediately fall in love with the little hatchling that bonds with Captain William Laurence and becomes one of the Aerial Corps’ best fliers? I also love the relationship that develops between dragon and dragon handler throughout the novel and the alternate historical setting in which their story is set.

Kalessin – The Farthest Shore (Ursula le Guin)
The eldest dragon of Earthsea, possibly the creator of the world, who carries Ged on his back and deigns to speaks to both Tenar and Tehanu. Magnificent and daunting, yet kind and trustworthy, Kalessin is what all dragons should be like in my mind.

Falkor – The Neverending Story (Michael Ende)
I have yet to meet a child of the 80’s who doesn’t adore Falkor. The fluffy luckdragon is Bastian’s faithful companion on a quest to save the Childlike Empress. But more importantly, we all just want to cuddle him.

Toothless – How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell)
I’ll admit, I haven’t read the children’s series yet, and I imagine the story probably differs tremendously from the 2010 animated film (which I adore), but Toothless needed to be on this list. One of my favourite dragons, this night fury is the goofy and fiercely loyal best friend we all wish we had.

Smaug – The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
Of course, no list like this would be complete without the real King Under the Mountain, Smaug the Chiefest of Calamaties, the Unassessably Wealthy. Arrogant, vicious, incredibly intelligent and proud, Smaug is probably the most memorable dragon of our times.

And as an added bonus, I’ll add Angharad, the Welsh dragon from Asrai’s Curse, the third installment of my Mythical Menagerie short story series. Why? I guess you’ll have to read and find out…

Did your favourites make the list? If not, let me know about them in the comments below!

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