Gaius Thrax, also known as Robert, is the town dragon catcher and exterminator, having apprenticed to his late father for some years. So if he tells you, I’M AFRAID YOU’VE GOT DRAGONS, it’s a serious issue. The setting is beautiful Bellemontagne, perhaps a part of medieval France, in which the Great Hall is perennially filled with princes hoping to woo the young princess. Unfortunately, there are pests in the wainscoting, and that’s where Robert is needed.

Princess Cerise, lovely, polite and hoping to learn to read, spares little time for the adoration of her would-be suitors. But one day she meets a wandering prince, riding about on a vague quest to keep him from underfoot in his father’s lands. Prince Reginald is attended by his squire Mortmain, and he finds the princess charming but is in no hurry to court anyone. Cerise thinks she’d be happy with Reginald. To show her home in a good light, she wants the castle cleaned and vermin exterminated.

The characters demonstrate that someone can be unhappy with their assigned role in life. Robert yearns to be a prince's valet, like Mortmain, who is less a valet and more a spy for Prince Reginald’s father, Krije of Corvinia, known for invading small nations. Princess Cerise doesn’t understand all the statesmanship involved but her parents King Antoine and Queen Hélène certainly do. They don’t have an army worth noticing and can’t afford to offend anyone.

Robert and his assistant Ostvald have a lot of work, between rat-sized and wolf-sized dragon species, but Robert is unhappy at killing off intelligent creatures, and at the back of his mind he knows that there are bigger dragons out there, somewhere. As this is an adventure, we can guess he will eventually meet one.

The tale is slow to start and occasionally gets bogged down in the activities of someone like Ostvald who is a minor character, so it does feel too padded for a YA story. Still, I have to warn you that when the bad times arrive, they are very bad. The tender reader may skip a few pages. Lessons are learned the hard way and it seems wrong that those making decisions survive – but they carry the plot, so that’s a given. The atmosphere shifts from a Terry Pratchett style story to a heavily dark fantasy with no laughs. Peter S. Beagle is an established American fantasy writer and like the title, I’M AFRAID YOU’VE GOT DRAGONS is a perfect blend of triviality and menace.