Dragonhaven (McKinley, Robin) 2007

I never thought I'd simply give up on a McKinley book, but 99 pages in to Dragonhaven, that's what I'm doing.  There are few authors with McKinley's ability to construct beautiful and simple sentences.  There are many, many authors who can try to write in the voice of a teenager.  McKinley's talents are wasted here, even more than in Chalice or Sunshine...  Yianni eventually convinced me I was wrong about Sunshine, but at least the plot of Sunshine should be interesting.  In Dragonhaven, the drama is caused by the existence of a law that makes it illegal to rescue and rehabilitate an endangered species (and by page 99, we've spent far too much time agonizing over it rather than advancing the plot, in foreshadowing of the same problems in Chalice).  This stretches my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point.  Maybe there already exists a similar law somewhere.  Maybe my children will enjoy it when they're preteens and want to discuss it with me.  Until then, this goes back on the shelf.