Carole Wilkinson's Dragonkeeper Winner!

Two weeks ago, I had the lovely Carole Wilkinson drop by my blog and ask a few questions. It was just a little fun as part of the Dragonkeeper blog tour. You can read all about it HERE.

As part of that tour, there was a competition running to win a complete set of Dragonkeeper books thanks to Walker Books Australia!

Well, The time has come to reveal the winner!

So with no further ado:

Carole Wilkinson's Dragonkeeper Blog Tour and Giveaway!

Welcome Welcome to a very exciting post!

I'm thrilled to welcome Carole Wilkinson to my humble blog as part of her Dragonkeeper Blog Tour!

I've done a little interview with Carole and then afterwards you'll find the competition with how you can win a complete set of the Dragonkeeper Books!

You might have seen the new jackets of her best-selling Dragonkeeper series out and about in celebration of Book 4: Blood Brothers. I wrote a review of the first three books which can be found HERE. My review of the new one is HERE.

 

I've asked Carole some questions so we can get to know her a little better. So without further ado, I present the wonderful Carole Wilkinson.

Thanks Michael for hosting the very first blog of my blog tour. And also thanks to the black dog books girls (Maryann Ballantyne, Sue Lawson, Karen Tayleur, Bernadette Kelly and Corinne Fenton) who prodded me into making my answers a bit less monosyllabic, while we were in Adelaide at the CBCA Conference.

My questions are going to be fairly light and fun, I hope that’s ok!

Blood Brothers (Dragonkeeper 4) by Carole Wilkinson

The Dragonkeeper series has a way of being engaging for such a wide readership. I talked about the first three books in a post here. Book four has a slightly different feel to it, while still being firmly a part of the world Carole Wilkinson has created.

We have moved forward in time from where book three finished, and Kai, our playful dragon character has grown up. He’s effectively a teenager, at the tender age of 465 years old and wants to find his place in the world, as many teenagers do.

It’s true, it is sad to have said goodbye to Ping, but as Carole says in the afterward, she deserved a quiet life after all she had been through. I think this works well in the structure of the series. The first three books work well as a trilogy, then book four begins a new adventure without disturbing the integrity of the first three. Well over 400 years have passed, so we have a whole new cast of human characters to meet.

Tao is a novice monk who loves the quiet monotony of life in the monastery. Do you think that will continue when Kai shows up? No. Thank goodness for us! For what kind of book would that make? Action, adventure, warring barbarian tribes, deceitful monks, enraged dragon opponents… the list goes on! Could Tao be Kai’s new dragonkeeper? But all the signs haven’t shown themselves. And what of his twin brother who has been bedridden since birth, unable to control the movements of his body?

If you’ve read the first three a while ago (book 3 come out in 2009) don’t worry if you feel like you can’t remember everything, it’s all history to this story anyway. If you haven’t read them, technically you could start with number four if you wanted, but you’d be missing such a rich back story! This series is just great! It's suitable for readers over 8 years old, but well written enough that anyone over 8 will enjoy it! I'm 20 years past the target age and it still hit a bulls-eye!

 

4 Gold Stars

Find it on Goodreads

 

Dragonkeeper series by Carole Wilkinson

 (New covers released May 2012)

Years ago, when I worked in the children's section of a large inner-city bookshop, one of the books that I could easily rely on to sell, and make a good recommendation, was Dragonkeeper and then its sequels as they came out. I had never read it, but I had heard they were good and parents were keen to give their children something that mixed a bit of history in with the fantasy that they craved.

I even saw an (adult) colleague consume them in rapid succession, which simply fueled my hand selling. Please don't mistake me for some casual staffer who knew nothing of the books they put in your hands, I was simply reading other series at the time and had heard enough good reports to confidently recommend this series. But I always planned on reading them.

Late last year I listened to the Dragonkeeper (book 1) audio book on one of my away trips for work. It was thoroughly entertaining. one of those delightful blends between facts taken from history and fantasy generously layered on top, you find yourself asking, why haven't there been more reports of dragon bones/fossils coming out of China?

So, recently when I knew I would be meeting Carole Wilkinson, I made the time to read the 2nd and 3rd books in the series. They were just as good. They are perfectly paced; excitement, action and adventure unfold equally with character development. They playful nature of the dragons makes you lament their disappearance from the world (for surely they once existed!). But the dragons, their keeper, Ping, and others we meet along the journey become your friends.

It's not hard to see why this series has won so many awards. But what makes them even better for me, is that an eight year old could pick these up (and they do) and love them, just as much as a teenager could, or a 28 year old (yes, I mean me). Good writing transcends target age groups.

Now I'm very excited to read the fourth book in the series, Blood Brothers, which will be out in May, but I can't wait for it!

4 Gold Star

Find them on Goodreads:

Book 1, Book 2, Book 3