"In the middle of the night, three knights go in search of a dragon. But in the dark nothing is what it seems"--Back cover.

Overjoyed to be reunited with her fellow ocean-dwelling dragons, Tsunami the SeaWing continues efforts to end the war for Pyrrhia in spite of a dangerous assassin who is threatening all their lives.

Eight-year-old Drake is snatched up by the King's soldiers and taken to the castle where he is told by the wizard Griffith that he has been chosen to be a Dragon Master like Ana, Rori, and Bo--and his first task will be to discover whether his dragon, Worm, has any special powers.

"Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College--Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet's already wondering how she'll get through. It's not just that it's grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it's designed to stretch the riders' capacity for pain beyond endurance....

"Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general--also known as her tough-as-talons mother--has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away ... because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans....

When Drake discovers that his friend and fellow Dragon Master, Bo, is trying to steal the Dragon Stone, he wonders if the dark wizard might be behind it, and he must try to find a way to protect the stone while keeping Bo's family out of danger.

When the king decides to take the dragons to Arkwood to visit Queen Rose, Rori, Drake, and their dragons are left behind--so when the evil wizard Maldred attacks the castle riding a giant four-headed dragon that spits poison, the two young dragon masters and their dragons are forced to defend the castle by themselves.

After successfully evading an Urgals ambush, Eragon is adopted into the Ingeitum clan and sent to finish his training in magic and swordsmanship so he can further help the Varden in their struggle against the Empire.

Chronicles the adventures and misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third as he tries to pass the important initiation test of his Viking clan, the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, by catching and training a dragon.

In this illustrated, abridged version of the original, the boy who finds the dragon in the cave knows it is a kindly, harmless one, but how can he convince the frightened villagers and, especially, St. George the dragon killer that there is no cause for concern?