The Last Dragonslayer

Jasper Fforde

Chapters (36)

CONTENTS

Dedication

Practical Magic

Tiger Prawns

Zambini Towers

About the Mystical Arts

The Magiclysm

Mother Zenobia

The Dragon Question

Patrick and the Childcatcher

Norton and Villiers

Mutiny

William of Anorak

Brian Spalding – Last Dragonslayer

The Dragonlands

Maltcassion

Gordon van Gordon

The Truth about Mr Zambini

Big Magic

His Majesty King Snodd IV

Yogi Baird

Foundling Trouble

The Duke of Brecon

Dragon Attack

Mr Hawker

Maltcassion again

Sir Matt Grifflon

Escape from Zambini Towers

Back to the Dragonlands

Noon

Anger

The New Order

The End of the Story

About the Author

Also by Jasper Fforde

The Last Dragonslayer

THE LAST DRAGONSLAYER

Jasper Fforde

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

The right of Jasper Fforde to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978 1 444 70719 9

Book ISBN 978 1 444 70717 5

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

An Hachette UK Company

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

Dedication

For Stella Morel

1897-1933

2010-

The grandmother I never knew

The daughter I will

Once, I was famous. My face appeared on T-shirts, badges, commemorative mugs and posters. I made front-page news, appeared on TV and was even a special guest on The Yogi Baird Show. The Daily Clam called me ‘The year’s most influential teenager’ and I was the Mollusc on Sunday’s woman of the year. Two people tried to kill me, I was threatened with jail, had sixteen offers of marriage and was outlawed by King Snodd. All that and more besides, and in less than a week.

My name is Jennifer Strange.

Practical Magic

It looked set to become even hotter by the afternoon, just when the job was becoming more fiddly and needed extra concentration. But the fair weather brought at least one advantage: dry air makes magic work better and fly farther. Moisture has a moderating effect on the Mystical Arts. No sorcerer worth their sparkle ever did productive work in the rain – which probably accounts for why getting showers to start was once considered easy, but getting them to stop was nigh-on impossible.