I read and reviewed each of the books collected in here separately, so this is really just for my own records. The rating - 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 - is an average of the individual ratings. The first two books in the series, Dealing with Dragons and Searching for Dragons, both earned 3 stars. They were fun (and often funny) fantasies for kids, and their strongest point was their protagonist, Cimorene, who ran away from being a princess to be housekeeper for a dragon, making lots of desserts - particularly chocolate mousse and cherries jubilee - while learning magic and seeing off blockheaded suitors. The later volumes, however, only earned 2 stars each. In Calling on Dragons, Cimorene became a background character, replaced by Morwen. Now I like Morwen, but she was saddled, in this volume, with a transformed rabbit called Killer, who is one of the most irritating supporting characters to ever draw breath. And finally, Talking to Dragons had as its protagonist Cimorene's son Daystar, who inherited not a single scrap of his mother's personality or charm.

Basically, the series started well but soon began to suffer from repetition and an unbalanced sense of the ridiculous. Quirk became laboured silliness, and the whole thing just sort of ran out of steam and interesting plot. Cimorene deserved better.