Highfire by Eoin Colfer

Published by Harper Perennial on January 28, 2020

I don’t make a habit of reading books in which dragons play a central role — or any role — but Highfire delivered the offbeat humor that the description promised. It’s hard to take a dragon seriously when he wears a Flashdance t-shirt and cargo shorts.

Vern (a/k/a Wyvern, a/k/a Lord Highfire) is, so far as he knows, the last dragon on Earth. Humans “managed to all but extinctify dragons back the day with nothing but crossbows and malicious intent,” leaving Vern with a serious grudge against the human race. He lays low in a Louisiana swamp, where he is occasionally forced to teach the alligators who’s boss.

Although Vern does his best to stay away from humans, he crosses paths with a teenager named Everett “Squib” Moreau. Squib has taken a summer job running moonshine and untaxed cigarettes for Bodi Irwin. He hopes to pay off his mother’s debts so that he and his mother can move away from the swamp. One motivation for moving is to protect his mother from Regence Hooke, whose duty to enforce the law has been corrupted by the cash he makes running errands for a drug cartel. Hooke has his eye on Squib’s mother but he’s preoccupied with a scheme to advance his career by running guns from Louisiana (where they are cheap and plentiful) to California (where they are regulated and therefore command a higher price).

Squib is transporting moonshine through the swamp when he witnesses Hooke commit a murder. Fleeing before he can be identified, Squib comes upon Vern. He flees again before Vern can toast him. With both Vern and Hooke chasing after him, thinks look bleak for Squib. Circumstances nevertheless conspire to turn Squib into Vern’s employee, as Vern needs someone to make his beer runs, his mogwai buddy Waxman having gone into hibernation.

The plot generally involves Squib’s effort to stay alive as Vern and Hooke go to war against each other. You would think a dragon would have the upper hand, but Vern is getting old and he doesn’t always have the oil in his system that he needs to fuel his fire. Hooke, on the other hand, is heavily armed and can call upon the resources of a cartel for assistance. The novel culminates in a glorious battle of the bayou.

If the plot sounds silly, it isn’t meant to be anything else. The story works because Eoin Colfer writes a laugh or two into every page. Colfer litters the text with jokes, inventive dialog, and commentary that is both irreverent and irrelevant (Vern hates the way dragons are depicted on Game of Thrones but the song “Blue Bayou” brings a tear to his eye).

The novel does have a serious message about prejudice and tolerance — in this case, prejudice against humans, some of whom are admittedly intolerable. “Humans, dragons, mogwai —ain’t no bad species nor good species,” Waxman tells Vern, who sort of agrees by the end of the novel, given the efforts that a few decent humans make to save his dragon skin (before it sheds). Replacing “species” with “races” brings the message closer to home, but Highfire isn’t a preachy novel. It is instead a very funny novel, one that makes me glad I overcame my own prejudice against books that feature dragons.

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