Book Review: A Cat’s Guide to Bonding with Dragons by Chris Behrsin

Ben is just a regular Bengal cat living in with his humans in South Wales—until he is summoned to another dimension by an evil warlock that makes him hunt demon rats.  Although he manages to escape the warlock’s tower, he finds himself in an unfamiliar world of magic and dragons.  Despite Ben’s pride in his purebred Bengal status, the only person who sees him as anything more than an ordinary cat is Salanraja, a dragon who is herself a bit of an outcast from her own kind.  Greatness and adventure await Ben if he magically bonds with Salanraja and becomes the first feline dragon rider.  While all he wants to do is get home to Wales and eat salmon treats again, fate has other plans as he is thrust into a battle of good and evil in which he must learn to think about others before himself.

This book was a fun piece of middle grade fiction that any child who has a cat at home (and even those who don’t) will identify with.  The author does a superb job of getting inside a cat’s psyche and making him an interesting main character.  Perhaps the most important theme of the book is Ben’s journey to look beyond his own needs and put others first.  This is a lesson that the target audience is just starting to learn in their own lives, and what better way to demonstrate it than with an engaging fantasy adventure about cats, magic, and dragons?  The plot and world that Chris Behrsin presents is compelling enough to keep older readers interested as well.  This would be a great book to read aloud with the kids.