Temple Cloud

For several years now, I have wondered about getting a Nativity scene.  There are all sorts of versions around, from a range of sizes and styles available in cathedral gift shops to a tiny Mexican folk art version that I once saw in a gift shop.  Books on handicrafts offer patterns to make your very own woollen ‘Knitivity’. When I’ve raised the subject with PDB11 , his answer has always been: ‘What I’d really like to have is a dragon Nativity.’   It’s not that he thinks that Jesus was a dragon, even in a fantasy universe , but just that, as a Christian who likes fantasy fiction involving dragons, he would like to combine the two ideas. A web search for ‘dragon Nativity’ brought up three main results.   Firstly, there are a number   of essays  arguing that you should include a dragon in Nativity scenes, in reference to the allegorical poem in Revelation 15 picturing Satan as a dragon attempting to eat Jesus. I did once have a go at making a Christmas ...

Now we cut back to Lizzie, listening to the Aurelia’s song in the ocean trench.  She, like Ben, is wondering whether the Aurelia will bring back vanished species such as unicorns or three-headed dragons.  There is a three-headed dragon in another of Cornelia Funke’s novels, Igraine Ohnefurcht ( Igraine the Brave ) , who appears to be a related species to Lung, since she too lives on moonlight.  However, it hadn’t been confirmed whether they existed in the Drachenreiter universe – though, as PDB11 complains, part of what he finds implausible about the Drachenreiter series is that it is so thick with fantastic beings and yet hardly anyone notices their existence. However, I’m still wondering about the chronology of unicorn extinction here.   Lizzie remembers discussing with Barnabas (which must have been more than twenty years ago) whether the Aurelia might bring unicorns back, which implies that they were already considered extinct by then.   But in Drachen...

The next chapter continues the experiences of the Wiesengrund family in America, but from Fliegenbein’s point of view, as he wakes early the next morning.  Good.  I love Fliegenbein, and I love the friendship between him and Ben, and this is the first time in this book that they have had the chance to spend time together as just the two of them, while everyone else is still asleep.  Characteristically, as they go out into the pre-dawn, Fliegenbein is worrying about how many creatures here could eat him ( practically everything except the rabbits ) , while Ben is cheerful and optimistic. Of course, Fliegenbein has real reason to worry – quite apart from whether mundane predators like coyotes or raccoons might eat him, the Aurelia is not only big enough to pull down a ship, but powerful enough to cause him and all fantastic beings to cease to exist.   Ben senses his anxiety and tries to cheer him up, pointing out that they don’t achieve anything by worrying about thi...

First of all, I have just noticed something very weird.   The title page of this book says ‘Translated from English by Tobias Schnettler’.   I knew that Cornelia Funke now lives in America (correction – she did live in America until 2021, but now lives in Italy), but it hadn’t occurred to me that she wasn’t still writing in German, her first language.   But even if she has decided to write in English, why would she not write her own translation into German? I did a bit of digging and found this interview , in which Funke explains her decision: The Aurelia Curse  is the first book in the Dragon Rider series that you have written straight into English. How did that affect the process of writing for you? Did it present any particular challenges? I wrote  The Glass of Lead and Gold  in English and the adaptation of  Pan’s Labyrinth  as a novel in English. And I had written several short stories and  Angel Heart , a text I wrote...

Now we get a chapter from the point of view of Kupfer – as we will have to call him, as the book doesn’t tell us his real name .  He resents the fact that Cadoc Aalstrom, the man who enslaved him, can’t even pronounce his real name – but then, probably most human readers couldn’t either .  Since Kupfer is far more intelligent than his master, one of his duties is to create horrific-sounding hybrid creatures : lobster-cuttlefish, starling-drones, and copper-wasps, and even a manticore – for which Cadoc Aalstrom takes all the credit. So how did Kupfer even come into his service?   Well, if a human discovers the existence of a copperman, then the copperman is under a curse  to serve that human until death.   The only thing that can break the curse is – dragon fire.   I think we can guess where this is going – but as far as Kupfer knows , dragons have disappeared. So Kupfer, as the reluctant minion of a villain much less intelligent than himself, has obvio...