Dragonkeeper

By Carole Wilkenson

Content Meters

Sex, romance, and nudity:: 10%
Violence and gore:: 50%
Language:: 10%
Substance use:: 40%
Negative messages:: 60%
Positive messages:: 50%

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Recommended:: Ages 11+
Read time:: 11 hours
Reviewed on:: May 16, 2024

Spoiler-Free Overview

An author friend and I went bookstore hopping last month. One of the stores was dreamy. It wasn’t magical or aesthetic, it was everything you’d expect from a forgotten bookstore. The isles were narrow, the lighting was dim, and shelves were stacked with used books filling every inch. Among them, I found Dragonkeeper by Carole Wilkenson.

I skimmed the first chapter, the back, and had to buy it. It’s a scholastic book, after all. Eager to dig into this east-Asian, alternate-history, fantasy book, I cracked open the yellow, wrinkled pages and began the journey.

Dragonkeeper begins with an 11-year-old slave girl without a name. She endures the abuse of her drunken master and cares for the imprisoned imperial dragons in the forgotten icy palace. Right out the gate, one of the dragons dies and a horrible scene ensues with everyone hoisting the dragon out of the dungeon to be pickled while the last dragon howls his sorrows.

Shortly after, the emperor arrives for the first time in the girl’s life. He sells the last dragon to an evil hunter and, feeling some responsibility for the first dragon’s death, the girl helps the dragon, Danzi, escape.

It is at this point that we finally learn the girl’s name: Ping. I try very hard not to judge character names because I know how hard they can be, but after waiting four chapters, I expected a better name than Mulan’s clumsy alias.

Being hunted by the empire, Ping is forced to accompany Danzi on his fantastical journey to the ocean. Ping, her trusty sidekick (Hua), and Danzi face various hurdles and suspicions throughout the book barring the way to their destination, and the dragon hunter comes back throughout the book as the primary antagonist, though I wish he was seen more in the final act.

Throughout the book, Danzi speaks in broken sentences except when he is giving wise counsel which feels inconsistent. Wilkenson writes at the end of the book that these wise sayings are based on ancient Daoist philosophy, also known as Taoism. This way of speaking felt natural for the dragon and the book would have benefited from him consistently sounding sophisticated.

Though the writing level is simple enough for the 7-10-year-old target audience, you will have to look up the glossary for several words. However, the value of a moral gray is too complicated for young readers (more on that in negative messages).

Overall, I was very disappointed with Dragonkeeper. As someone writing in east-Asian fantasy, I was ecstatic for this scholastic book, but it fell flat. Wilkenson kept secrets for no reason, she told so many things she could have shown, and the values taught were mediocre at best.

Although I have set the recommended reading age at 11+, I wouldn’t recommend this read.

Spoiler Alert

Venture beyond this point at your own risk!

Detailed Content Meters

Sex, romance, and nudity:: rating: 10%

At one point, Ping takes off her clothes to get into a bath. Nothing is described.
There is a short-lived but wholesome friendship/romance between Ping and the new boy-emperor at the end of the book.
Violence and gore:: rating: 50%

Ping is mistreated often and hardly fed. The book begins with her drunken owner throwing things at her.
A dragon dies. Danzi wails while the dead dragon’s body is being pickled above the dungeon where the dragons are kept.
The dragon hunter wounds Danzi several times throughout the book.
Ping is sacrificed to a nonexistent dragon by superstitious villagers. She is drowning when Danzi flies to save her and rips his wing open. Ping sews it closed again but the dragon says it isn’t painful.
They visit a market of witches and wizards to retrieve the dragon stone. It is a very creepy scene with parts of creatures and full creatures being sold for magical purposes. More on this in negative messages.
Hua chews the leg off a raven.
Near the end of the book, the shaman and goat-herding boys join the emperor on “holy” ground. It’s not seen, but when they don’t return, Ping is told the shaman killed the boys and killed himself because none of them were permitted on the sacred ground. The emperor’s counselor tells Ping that this ensures a prized place in heaven for them. This is not supposed to be seen as a good answer.
A friend of Danzi, who admittedly had this coming after betraying Ping, is killed on screen. Ping distracts the dragon hunter and his crossbow misfires at the alchemist who dies right there.
The lovable sidekick rat, Hua, is fatally injured. Danzi and he set off to maybe find healing across the ocean at the end of the book.
Language:: rating: 10%

No cursing is used, but name-calling is (i.e. “wretch” and “stupid”).
Substance use:: rating: 40%

Ping’s master is visibly drunk several times at the beginning of the book. His drunkenness is mentioned many more times by Ping throughout the book.
It is insinuated that alcohol is given to the goat-herding boys to calm their nerves before their impending death.
Alchemical substances are used but none in a way that insinuates they were illicit substances.
Negative messages:: rating: 60%

The wise figure, Danzi, outright states that the rat’s life is as important as a human’s. At that point in the book, he didn’t even like the rat.
While this is not necessarily bad, the book teaches a moral gray when a boy steals from Ping for his destitute family. The book goes out of its way to teach that “wrong” decisions can be condoned in some situations. As a person who believes in values-based ethics, I can follow this until it begins breaking values. However, this book is aimed at 7-11-year-olds who, according to Kohlberg’s model of moral development, should be learning to weigh morality based on universal rules. Thus, moral gray can be confusing and damaging in this age range.
Danzi tells Ping not to be afraid of witches and wizards. Only necromancers are to be feared as they deal with the spirits of the dead. It is agreeable that necromancers are bad, but with the level of ick within the witch marketplace and the nocturnal nature of the people, it is a hard argument that these are good witches like the Wizard of Oz.
At the end of the book, the emperor emerges from his séance with his ancestors with the decree that his reign will be blessed. It is not stated whether this is legitimate or not.
Positive messages:: rating: 50%

All life is valuable. Admittedly, this gets taken too far when the life of a rat is seen as equal to a human's… especially since it was a very unlikable human so the book coerces the reader to agree with the value based on the circumstance.
Anger is a reliable but erratic and volatile source of power. This is evident as Ping learns to wield qi as a superpower.

Detailed Overview

Dragonkeeper explores a real time in history with fantastical twists and cultural realism. Superstition and the assumed deity of emperors were real parts of China during the Han dynasty. Slaves, sacrifices, poverty, and reliance on favorable weather would have been common experiences. Daoism (AKA Taoism) was also influential among the educated class. Within this world, Wilkenson writes about an underdog’s journey from rags to… motherhood.

At first, Ping is reluctant to leave the terrible life she knows, but she slowly comes to love the enigmatic dragon in the stone he insists she protects. All of this is great except that the dragon never fully explains the stone until it hatches. There is no reason the dragon doesn’t tell Ping the stone is an egg except to keep the reader wondering.

So, Ping goes on this journey, hoping to gain a wish from the ocean she comes to consider a kingdom of its own right. The dragon hunter shows up a few times, but the most threatening moment in the book is from a random antagonist pulled in while Ping and Danzi are trying to retrieve their stone from the evil alchemist market. It was a cool setting and boat fight, but it made little sense in the context of the story. Not to mention after the fight finishes, Danzi is stuck tied to the ship while Ping uses all of her strength to steer the boat. Again, there is no reason Hua couldn’t chew the ropes and free Danzi except to add tension.

I promise this is the last one, but the climax also had problems. Wilkenson does an incredible job building a friendship between the emperor and Ping when Danzi and his alchemist friend betray and abandon Ping at the palace.

Instead of going after him, she decides to trek up the mountain with the emperor. When they finally make it to the top, after the goat-herding boys and shaman are sacrificed with the goats (I’m still stuck on that one, so the author did a good job wrenching your heart for the kids there), Ping hears the dragon stone scream. She runs to find Danzi, the alchemist, and the dragon stone in dire peril as the dragon hunter cocks his crossbow. The dragon hunter we haven’t heard from in probably a hundred pages.

Big surprise, Ping uses her qi powers to beat the dragon hunter. When she asks Danzi what he was doing on the mountain his explanation is sorely lacking. He wanted to fly to the ocean, but he needed to be on a mountain to help him get off the ground and then the dragon hunter showed up presumably (not by me) having had a mole in the imperial guard. This is a case of, coincidence being ok at the beginning of the book, but not the end.

All in all, the story lacked engagement and cohesion. I am truly baffled by its ratings online. If you read it, I would love to know your take on the book.

Shout out to the one page that had a pangolin.