Most fantasy seems to be set in a sort of pseudo historical Medieval period, and this book takes that idea and runs with it. Historical, and accurate, information put forward in a guidebook for the adventuring hero.

This was such a clever idea and I loved it so much. From travel, to bathhouses, to fighting dragons and marrying the princess, this book was chock full of fascinating history, framed in a hilarious manner that kept my attention constantly hooked.

The humor and wit evident here really made me want to search out for more of Stevenson's work. And the selected sources and further reading pages promise much more historical shenanigans.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tiller Press for this arc.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I really enjoyed reading it the plot was interesting and the characters made me want to know more about them. I highly recommend.

I very much appreciate being gifted this copy of How to Slay a Dragon
by Cait Stevenson, and the opportunity to read & review it. Thanks to the publisher.

This was such a fun read! I love the formatting of this book! It's the sort of thing I wish I'd had to read when I was younger and getting into Fantasy.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

With a title like How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages, there's little doubt you're going to grab a lot of readers' attentions. Unfortunately, How to Slay a Dragon is not a book about mythology or folk tales, nor is it about how real life inspired the fantasy tropes that so many have come to know and love. Rather, author Cait Stevenson goes in the opposite direction by taking a fantasy trope and then spending the rest of the chapter elaborating on something only tangentially related. Crossing a cursed swamp becomes a primer on medieval sanitation, slaying dragons is instead about pollution, and avoiding getting swallowed by a monster is used as an excuse to talk about cheetah-tamers. Most of these stories are brief and truncated, often concluding with some kind of witty reveal about what happened to the person in question, but without explaining how or why their story ended that way. At best, this style could function as a solid overview of medieval history, whetting readers' appetites just enough to get them interested in pursuing further readings, but if that was the intention with this book, then it sorely missed the mark. How to Slay a Dragon is much too scatter-brained, jumping around in time and location so often that the only way to remember half of what is mentioned is by pausing to take notes.

The book has a light and fun tone, but often veers too close to the cutesy and quirky, which is used in place of more substantive material. (“The Holy Roman Empire in 1486 was shaped vaguely like an egg with some yolk running down into Italy, and Tyrol was the yolk.”) Stevenson clearly knows her stuff, but she doesn't convey it in a way that inspires the reader to want to learn more. If anything, How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages feels like a misleading title created to dupe readers into thinking they were getting something different. Like the rest of the book, it's something that sounds fun and stylistic in theory, but ultimately lacks the substance to back it up.

What should you ask a magic mirror? How do you outwit a genie? Where should you dig for buried treasure? Fantasy media’s favorite clichés get new life from How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero’s Guide to the Real Middle Ages, a historically accurate romp through the medieval world. Each entry presents a trope from video games, books, movies, or TV—such as saving the princess or training a wizard—as a problem for you to solve, as if you were the hero of your own fantasy quest. Through facts sourced from a rich foundation of medieval sources, you will learn how your magical problems were solved by people in the actual Middle Ages.

Divided into thematic subsections based on typical stages in a fantastical epic, and inclusive of race, gender, and continent, How to Slay a Dragon is perfect if you’re curious to learn more about the time period that inspired some of your favorite magical worlds or longing to know what it would be like to be the hero of your own mythical adventure.

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Looking at the gorgeous cover I know I have to get this book! And it's enjoyable for me as a fan of epic fantasy and especially medieval fantasy. I learn a lot while reading this book and I really enjoy every moment of it. Thank you so much Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC! It's definitely a 4 star from me!

I loved the set up of this book, as well as all the fascinating bits of history. Already recommended it to two of my coworkers.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publishers/ Author for providing me with an eARC of this title in exchange for my unbiased review.

This book sets out to give a historically accurate view of the common themes and tropes often found in fantasy books set in the medieval times. Stevenson gives insight into how you would go about solving these magical problems during the Middle Ages. What would you do on a quest to save the Princess? How would you go about slaying the dragon?

Stevenson's wealth of medieval knowledge really comes across in this book. You can definitely tell she is someone who knows what they are talking about. This book is full of fun little quips about these tropes which makes for an easy and enjoyable quick read. However, due to the light and humorous content in the book you aren't actually going to get a ton of historical information. This is more an entertaining book made up of random anecdotes relating to the ways things were back in the Middle Ages. You get some inclusion of Jewish and Islamic histories along with the mostly European views. For me, the layout of the story felt scattered and kind of all over the place. Sometimes I was left wondering how certain examples pertained to the overall subject at hand.

This book is good for people looking for a quick read that will impart random facts about the medieval times. It is also great for people wondering what it would have actually been like to be the hero of their favorite stories. I think even people who often find the topic of history to be a boring one would still enjoy this book.

A conversational overview of life in medieval times, filled with facts and humor. Although this is non-fiction, each section is framed as quest advice (Can you flirt with the barmaid, how to win a bar fight, etc), covering everything from demographics to sewer systems to patterns of the spice trade. I liked how this books takes time to both debunk common misconceptions as well as present more obscure anecdotes.

**Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC**

Amazing. Absolutely STUNNING!!! As a fellow lover of medieval history, I found this book to not only be informative, but also intriguing. This book read more as a creative storybook of history rather than an average textbook. A fabulous choice on the author's part, which I'm sure will capture the minds and hearts of other readers. I learned so much more about medieval history and love how smoothly I was able to invest myself in the story. Bravo!

Thoroughly enjoyable, funny, and I learned things!!! If you are an epic fantasy fan and wanted to know more about what the Middle Ages were really like, this is the book for you!! And all the information and anecdotes are presented in such an easy to understand and quite funny way in some cases that it's just wonderful to read. So many different stories from different regions focusing on all the parts of an epic fantasy quest. From inns and how they really functioned, how many people really could read, what clothes should you wear, and public toilets in London....yes and now I know!! And the automata of the Medieval Muslim rulers is just mind blowing and how did I never know this?? This book really does have wonderful information, stories about real people who did some of these real things and I enjoyed every moment of the book!!

Thanks to NetGalley & Tiller Press for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. Sadly, DNF at 20%.

It's not a bad book by any means, it's well written but I think this is just not for me.

There's a lot of stories/analogies that don't really get to any point and just meander for a bit that I found tedious. Probably just not a book for me though.

Once your book is titled “How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages”, it pretty much guarantees that I will read it. I absolutely loved Ian Mortimer’s popular history series “The Time Traveler’s Guide” giving “regular life” historical information told with a bit of humor. I also love deconstruction of fantasy tropes. And Stevenson - who does not only hold a PhD in medieval history making her knowledge respectable, but overall seems like a fun person really passionate about medieval history - certainly goes out of her way to make sure that her book is enjoyable to the readers.

And yes, the book is funny and light and easy to read - but there’s a “but”. It pains me to admit that there are times when there is such a thing as too much irreverent snark and awkward zaniness. And even such a thing as an overload of parentheticals. I am not a stranger to this style; I tend to rely on it myself in my reviews, but when spread over the length of the entire book rather than a blog post or an article it becomes a bit too tiresome and forced.

“Public toilets meant dealing with weather, inconvenience, and the public. Ergo, private toilets. Private toilets were expensive; ergo, chamber pots. Chamber pots; ergo, emptying chamber pots. Emptying chamber pots; ergo, windows.
If you decide to travel as a pilgrim, be absolutely sure to grab your wide-brimmed hat.”

Here’s another thing: it’s trying to do too much in too little of space. By really trying to include a lot of material and expanding geography to Europe, Middle East and parts of Africa it becomes a bit too scattered, lacking cohesion, and sacrifices information depth in favor of its amount. The anecdotes, while sometimes amusing, were a bit too light on actual information, a bit bare-bones — and had I not recently reread Ian Mortimer’s “The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century”, I would not have had enough information to actually envision things discussed beyond the bare basics.

All these anecdotes not only make the book seem quite scattered and meandering, but also often do not provide answers to the questions Stevenson poses, serving as almost tangential illustrations. It seems to me that she has such a wealth of anecdotes and trivia stemming from her significant knowledge of and passion for the Middle Ages that she just wants to cram them all in this book and then try to make them fit some sort of a structure.

Not to mention that the supposed blend of real history and fantastical hero’s quest does not work well as a framing device, despite its seeming brilliance. The examples often feel shoehorned into the narrative framework and the chapter theme, which can be a bit irritating as it more often than not involves more than tenuous connections to the topic supposedly discussed.

But this book can certainly work as a light and entertaining source of anecdotes and trivia that can provide fodder for random water cooler chats, of the “Hey, did you know that in the Middle Ages…?” variety:

“In fourteenth-century London, the smallest amount of ale you could generally buy was a quart. Not a cup, not a pint—a quart. Further, innkeepers were legally required to lock the doors of their inns at night: no one in, no one out. These policies were not at all related.”

“[…] we’ll just say that the increasingly shrill pressure on governments in the sixteenth century to close Western European bathhouses coincided with the spread of syphilis.”

It’s readable, often funny — but a bit-all-over-the-place disjointed, and despite the wealth of anecdotes a bit too light on historical information. I’d recommend Ian Mortimer’s “The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century” and “The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England” instead, or at least as sources of historical information prior to reading this book.

2.5 stars as I found my attention wander quite a bit and immediately after finishing this book all I can recall is that it has a smattering of sometimes amusing anecdotes.

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I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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So, you're the chosen one and it's the middle ages. Not just medieval flavored. But actual medieval period. What can you do? Who are the counterparts you can relate to? Where can you go for help? Because, look, you're not gonna slay the Dragon all by yourself without knowing what you're getting into. That's how you end up eaten... or worse.

Thankfully there's a book to help you along. This book cleverly titled "How to Slay a Dragon."

Convenient!

--

How to Slay a Dragon is a historical romp through a lot of the high fantasy tropes. The book takes a trope and then finds a historical analogue for said trope. For instance, in the section on how not to marry a prince, the book uses hagiography of several saints to prove their points.

The book has a bit of a tongue-in-cheek presentation that both works for it and against it. How so? Well, in the pro column, the book is readable -- always important... but it's often a little too readable, in an odd way. The writing and history is dumbed down and summarized so much that the point can get muddled or lost. And because the book is so tongue-in-cheek there isn't a lot of analysis about why the example given is a relevant to the particular trope.

I also had issues with the layout/format. Things didn't seem to flow logically and weren't presented in an order that made sense to me. I fully admit the author knows their stuff and is passionate about the subject, but I'm not sure they laid it out in the best way. I do appreciate that the author states up front what they consider the Middle Ages... because that can vary from scholar to scholar. And I also appreciated that while this was a mostly Eurocentric look at the Middle Ages in included sources from Jewish and Islamic Scholars and histories.

So I'm torn. I liked aspects of this book, and I didn't like others. There's some good info here, but it's sometimes hard to find. It's both a little too hard and a little too easy to read and I'm struggling to think of who the right audience is for this.

So because of that I give this:

Three Stars

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley

Not a bad book, but definitely not what it purports to be. 2.5 Stars.

How to Slay a Dragon is advertised as a historically accurate look at the base question of "How do you be a Fantasy Hero in the middle ages?" While the book is set up with sections that are titled to follow this theme, the reality is very different. There really isn't much of a narrative structure to any of the sections, but instead various historical anecdotes of varying degrees of relation to the topic of each chapter. Often times the anecdotes (while some may be interesting) do not come even close to answering the questions posed.

There is definitely some enjoyment in reading the frenetic ramblings of a passionate historian, but what this book is really missing is any sense of cohesion. There are many interesting (and some less interesting) stories told, but it's such a mish-mash of random anecdotes that nothing ever really comes together. I can tell that Cait Stevenson is passionate about this area as well as extremely knowledgeable, but I think this really could have benefitted by being co-authored by someone with a bit more experience in storytelling, or at least going through an experienced editor.

Instead of getting the jovial romp discussing how you might accomplish the many Fantasy story tropes in the real world Middle Ages, we end up getting what, as aforementioned, really comes off as rambling. I would love to have a conversation over drinks with the author and just sit and listen to the stories she's telling, but in a book format it left quite a lot to be desired.

**Note: I was provided with an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

There are some books that you look at the cover, read the title, and read the description and instantly know that "Yes, this book is for me". That was my exact sentiment upon discovering "How to Slay a Dragon" by Cait Stevenson. The premise was promising, and it was with growing excitement that I read through the author's introduction. A background as a Medievalist? Being a home-brew Medievalist-in-training myself, that lead me to exclaim in delight. I was ready, willing, and eager to dive in as the assuredly target audience for this book.

Disappointed is not a strong enough word to express how I felt by the time I was a quarter of the way into the book. However, let's focus on the positives here first. The author's writing is incredibly readable and laced with snarky humor and unsubtle jabs that make it an easy read compared to history volumes and enjoyable as long as your brand of humor and wit aligns perfectly with the author's. The style of writing is equally a strength of the book and a weakness, as by the midpoint of the book it had grown tiresome, repetitive, and failed to add anything to my enjoyment of the experience. That's okay, though, because I've read historical texts recently and the writing style in those isn't always going to feel ideal, either.

The author clearly has a good baseline of knowledge of people, events, and tales from the Middle Ages. She draws upon a deep pool of examples to supply for each of the fun categories within the text. That's a mark in her favor. Or, it would be, except that some of these examples and tales are so threadbare in their connection that you can tell she's working double-time to try and make it all fit. This, for me, is where it all falls apart. Between the loose connections on some of the tales, and the drawing upon a multitude of timelines and locales to fit those puzzle pieces into the advice she wants to pass along, it makes this text feel like a threadbare quilt of hodgepodge. Had it centered on a specific period and place, like Ian Mortimer's "Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" , there would have been greater cohesion found throughout. But since the premise is that you, a fantasy hero, are learning to survive like those in the Middle Ages, it all really depends on how closely your fantasy world aligns to the proper period and locale being mentioned at the moment before it gets discarded in favor of something completely different.

I certainly didn't dislike the book. I appreciate the wit, the depth of the author's knowledge, and the premise being presented in a style that makes it readable for the modern audience. Many folks will probably read this and get a huge kick out of the book and find some nugget of deeper appreciation for the Middle Ages. That, in itself, is a huge win for Medievalists as a whole. Her love for the period shines through, and the hope would be that others will read this and gain some sense of appreciation for it as well.

<i>How to Slay a Dragon</i> bills itself as a fantasy hero's guide to the real middle ages. It really feels like a medievalist fantasy buff with a lot of stories to tell shoehorning them into some kind of fantasy framework. The stories tend to be interesting but the framework can get a little creaky.

By that, I mean that the stories she wants to tell often have little relation to the fantasy theme of each chapter. I hate to say it, but sometimes Stevenson isn't a very good storyteller -- she introduces extraneous details (or SKIPS what seems like critical information) or takes detours in the story, all of which can obscure the connection between the story and the theme, although in some cases the detour is the only thing that connects the story to the chapter theme.

Two examples. First, in the chapter "How to save the princess" there is a subheading of "The princess saves herself." One of the stories here is about Kunigunde, a daughter of the holy Roman emperor who married the duke of Bavaria, and was the subject of rumors (from political enemies of the duke) that the duke had stolen her away and forcibly married her. We get a line about how Kunigunde had her own ideas about a rescue: namely, she didn't need it. Then the story fast forwards <i>twenty-three years</i>, by which point her husband is dead (with no description) and becomes about her exposing a religious charlatan for being a fraud.

Second, in the chapter "How to be married to the prince". The first story starts by describing the tendency of monks and nuns to allegorically consider themselves married to Christ (the Prince of Peace), even the men, but then gives an example of an archbishop writing lovey-dovey letters to a male colleague and that being considered normal.

Both of these stories are interesting, especially Kunigunde's -- I want to know more about the decades the author skipped! But the degree of non sequitur in each gave me whiplash. For maximum enjoyment of the book, ignore the fantasy hero gimmick and just imagine a historian telling you anecdotes at a party.

I really enjoy learning about everyday life from before the 1600's plus I enjoy Skyrim and fantasy novels set in the Middle Ages, so I was pretty excited to read this nonfiction book that combines my love for all of those things. I really enjoyed all the stories Stevenson told in this book, but I'm not sure it had the effect Stevenson was going for. The chapter and section headings didn't seem to always fit well together and it made the information a bit all over the place to me. I haven't read a whole lot of nonfiction since college, so maybe it's just my inexperience in the genre. But I still enjoyed learning about the Middle Ages and plan on buying a physical copy of this when it's released.

I'm going to be real here, I thought this was a completely different book than it was. I thought it would be a fun fantasy romp through fictional middle ages, but it was a nonfiction history book. Realizing this brought a little bit of the joy I felt when I first read the title away.
I do think this was really interesting. Once I got past my initial disappointment, I read this fairly quickly over the course of several bus rides. I feel like I learned a lot, although how much of that knowledge I retained is yet to be seen.
Also, the chapter titles are so much fun! I loved that the author made a really good attempt at making the history diverse, although they could have done a lot more.
This was an enjoyable read, but not one I would pick up again. I would totally recommend this to any of my friends who are interested in learning about this time period.

Cait Stevenson attempts to pass on her love of the Middle Ages to her audience in How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero’s Guide to the Real Middle Ages, and for the most part her endeavor is successful! First and foremost, this is not a children’s book no matter how enticing to a child the title may be. Despite the book claiming to be a fun how-to guide for successful epic quests, including, but not limited to, how to slay a dragon, the scholarly historical language would be hard for a child to follow. There is also (historically accurate) content that would be inappropriate for children.

How to Slay a Dragon is very humorous in that Stevenson uses internet slang and modern abbreviations/acronyms to describe history. The juxtaposition of modern language against the Middle Ages content and the dry wit and outright sarcasm throughout the tone of the book is very comedic. Basically, Stevenson pokes fun at medieval thinking viewed through modern knowledge while also giving real solutions to the trials of a hero’s quest. Although, Stevenson does tend to take sidebars and go on tangents, which can be hard to follow at times.

Circling back to the scholarly language: Stevenson clearly has vast knowledge of the Middle Ages, as evidenced by her PhD in medieval history from the University of Notre Dame, but I found there to be many instances of the points of her medieval anecdotes to go over my head as someone with only an undergrad minor in European area studies, if you catch my meaning? Furthermore, if you’re not a history buff, some of Stevenson’s allusions to fairly commonly known historical events could be lost on you, and you may end up googling instead of reading.

All in all, I give How to Slay a Dragon four stars for seamlessly blending entertainment and education in a humorous manner, but sometimes not quite correlating significance with story.