DAD ROCK DRAGON QUEST

A 12-year-old rock star wannabe finds an even better identity after her dad’s dragon is kidnapped.

In a thematic mashup that seldom pauses for breath, Reardon stirs rock dreams, parent issues, and (magical!) animal trafficking into a road trip that’s highlighted by life-changing family revelations. To Zadie, the contrast between her flamboyant if often absent dad, Damian Drake—who looks “as if Indiana Jones had wandered into a Zeppelin concert”—and Lloyd Clutterbuck, her mom’s nerdy and excessively cautious new boyfriend, could hardly be greater. Then she discovers that Damian is secretly a Gamewarden, charged with keeping cryptids out of the clutches of cruel and rapacious collectors. When she and her eco-warrior older sister, Persephone, tag along on a frantic chase across the Midwest to rescue Damian’s companion dragon, Maverick, from brutal poachers, her views of both father figures change. Following several epic clashes with the thoroughly demonized bad guys, she not only comes away with an animal companion of her own, but also a new vision of her destiny, thanks to the discovery that her beloved guitar is good for even more than thunderous power chords. Along with chapter titles that make up a rocking playlist, the author weaves plentiful references to classic rock and pop standards into this adrenaline junkie’s delight. Most characters read white; Zadie confusingly associates her mother’s homeland of Sweden with “volcanoes and fjords.”

A headlong, cranked-up romp—with dragons!