Appreciate a Dragon Day

That is today. I had no idea such an observance was in existence, but since it has presented itself to my attention, I feel that it is only right commemorate it. Happy Appreciate a Dragon Day, all of you! I am going to mark the day by appreciating several dragons:

Smaug: Well, he is obvious, right? Smaug is sort of the archetypal dragon, the one we all think of when we think of dragons at all. He is everything a dragon should be - a wicked, wily, miserly beast, red as the gold he hoards and the flame he breathes, huge and terrible. He quite nearly steals the show. The Hobbit might be about the adventures of Bilbo and Gandalf and 13 dwarves, but Smaug is one of the first things one remembers about the book.

Chrysophylax Dives: Smaug's lesser known predecessor, he appears in Tolkien's short story Farmer Giles of Ham. He and Smaug share many characteristics, but Chrysophylax is less clever and more cowardly - a comic dragon to go with a comic hero. Everyone should read Farmer Giles of Ham. It is full of droll humour, wit and plays on words. People whose acquaintance with Tolkien is confined to The Lord of the Rings, will get a chance to see his under-appreciated sense of humour.

Beowolf's Dragon: Fans of The Hobbit will be on familiar ground with this dragon. Like Smaug, his is a great, savage wyrm, who has absolutely no use for his vast hoard, but knows each piece of it intimately. If Smaug is the archetypal dragon, Beowulf's dragon is his father, a terrible creature with all his wickedness, and none of the urbanity that makes Smaug amusing. He is evil, and though Beowulf defeats him, it costs him his life.

Kazul: Normally, I do not much care for revisionary fairy tales and folklore. Dragons are supposed to be wicked, unless one is writing about Eastern dragons, which are good luck. Either way, they are definitely magical and should be treated as such. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede, is an exception to that. For all the tangled enchantment running through her stories, her world is delightfully ordinary (one short story features a Frying Pan of Doom) and her ordinary dragons are exactly the sort of dragon one would expect to find there. Kazul, who is an important character throughout the series, has all the typical dry draconian wittiness, but is utterly lacking in wickedness.

Fire Lizards: Although I never really got into Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern  series, I did read a the Dragon Singer books - three young adult books that are connected to it. I remember enjoying them very much at the time, though that was many years ago, and I have never had any great inclination to re-visit them since. However, the fire lizards - tiny, colourful dragons with a flair for music - were brilliant. I dearly wanted one of my own, and I still love them.