by Robin McKinley (1924)
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Picture this: you’re Aerin, awkward and overlooked in the royal court of Damar, slipping out at dawn on the back of Talat, your ancient white warhorse with scarred knees and a heart fiercer than any young stallion. The wind whips your face as you practice your sword swings, dreaming of dragons while the court whispers about your foreign mother’s “witch blood.” Then comes the day a real dragon—small, vicious Agsded—descends on your villages, and you, armed with a battered sword, a bellyful of antler-and-elven-kenet brew, and sheer stubborn will, ride out alone to kill it. Your hands shake, your stomach churns, but you thrust that blade home, and suddenly the world tilts—you’re a dragon-slayer in a land that never believed in you.
That’s the electric rush of The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley’s masterpiece where heroism isn’t handed down from prophecy but forged in the quiet rebellions of a girl who loves horses more than gowns. Aerin isn’t lithe or ladylike; she’s sturdy, freckled, quick with sarcasm, and her journey spirals from that gritty first kill into a quest for the lost Hero’s Crown, a relic that could save her kingdom from the monstrous Northern demons. You’ll feel the bone-deep exhaustion as she drags herself north through blizzards, her mind fraying under the crown’s eerie blue fire, battling not just kelar magic and shape-shifting foes but her own unraveling sanity. McKinley’s prose wraps around you like Damar’s dusty winds—lyrical yet grounded, every hoofbeat and sword clash vivid enough to draw blood.
What sets this apart in epic fantasy? It’s a fairy tale flipped inside out: no simpering princess waiting for rescue, no effortless magic. Aerin earns every scrap of power through trial, failure, and that raw, unspoken fury of being dismissed. Dragons aren’t majestic pets but reeking, cunning beasts that can melt steel; the throne room politics bite harder than any claw. While it echoes in later heroines like those in Pierce’s Tortall or Novik’s Temeraire—women who claim their destinies unapologetically—this book burns brighter for its intimate scale, turning one woman’s defiance into legend without armies or artifacts stealing the show.
If you loved the fierce independence of Alanna the Lioness or the subversive sparkle in McKinley’s own Beauty, this is the book that’ll hook you deepest—pure adventure with a heroine who feels like your boldest self.
Tonight, light a candle, crack open The Hero and the Crown, and ride with Aerin before the dragons wake.
Author portrait: Photo: Robin McKinley | License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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