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Cover of The Fire Within

The Fire Within

core novel 2001 The Last Dragon Chronicles

Record

First published2001
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating3.81 (32,819 ratings, collected 2026-10-31)
First-edition ISBN9781841215334
Internal chronology1

Synopsis

David Rain, a college student in his early twenties, rents a room in the Wayward Crescent house of Liz Pennykettle, a potter who makes clay dragons, and her eleven-year-old daughter Lucy. The dragons that fill the house seem strangely alive, and David is given one of his own, Gadzooks, a small figure that carries a pencil and pad to help him write. Asked to write a birthday story for Lucy, and drawn into an effort to rescue an injured squirrel named Conker, David begins to suspect that the family and their dragons share a long and secret history. As he gets to know the Pennykettles, he has to decide how far to trust what he is seeing in the house.

Where it sits

Awards (verified)

  • Rotherham Children's Book Award, 2002: won

Notes

  • First published by Orchard Books in the UK.
  • From the series record (The Last Dragon Chronicles): Seven middle-grade fantasy novels following David Rain, the Pennykettle family and their living clay dragons.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.

  • Reading order, within the series The Last Dragon Chronicles: position 1 of 7: next Icefire (2003)

Sources

← The Last Dragon Chronicles dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.