Gork, the Teenage Dragon
A novel
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A TODAY Show Pick • A love story, a fantasy, and a coming-of-age story, Gork the Teenage Dragon is a wildly comic, beautifully imagined, and deeply heartfelt novel that shows us just how human a dragon can be.
“Charming and wildly imaginative.”—BuzzFeed
“The fun is in the gonzo, sci-fi fantasy details. . . . Hudson seems to be taking cues from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels and Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with perhaps a smattering of Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Campbell and Mark Twain.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
Gork is the nerdiest dragon at WarWings Military Academy. He has a giant heart and tiny horns. His nickname is Weak Sauce. Today before his high school graduation, he must ask a female dragon to be his queen. The result is a rollicking quest for true love on the most madcap day ever known to a high school senior – dragon or otherwise.
Along the way, Gork gets help from his best friend Fribby, a fierce female robot dragon who is brilliant, snarky, and totally obsessed with death; and Athenos II, his sentient spaceship who carries a shocking secret from his childhood. Ultimately, Gork will have to lock horns with his evil grandfather, Dr. Terrible. Can a quest for true love make a hero out of a dragon?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sorrows of adolescent dragon Gork the Terrible start when he's hatched on Earth, the honeymoon destination of his parents, who were killed when their spaceship crashed there. He's raised by his sentient spaceship until he's three and then rescued by his fiendish grandfather, Dr. Terrible, and taken to the dragons' home planet, Blegwethia. Gork, cursed with laughably tiny horns, a tendency to faint in moments of crisis, and a compassionate heart the last of which is considered the greatest failing for a dragon is a teenage enrollee at the WarWings Academy when he faces the ultimate challenge: win the luscious chick Runcita Floop as his queen, or become a slave for life. Gork's amusing growing-up story unfolds in vignettes of encounters with various kooky fellow dragons and episodes of Dr. Terrible's battles with Runcita's father, Dean Floop. Throughout, Hudson makes generally witty and occasionally brilliant reflections on humans' often reptilian behavior. Each time Gork's soft heart gets him in trouble with his peers and superiors, it marks a stage in his scaly maturation, until finally he finds his true love and accepts his destiny not as a fire-belching killer but as a sensitive poet. Though the fun starts to wear thin over time, Hudson's cleverly plotted and executed tale allows for a number of insights into the beastly adolescent behavior that can bedevil humans of all ages.
