Best Dragon Slayer Books
Dragon slaying is the oldest shape a dragon story has. Someone goes into the dark where the thing lives, and only one of them comes out.
These are the books that still tell it that way.
Beowulf
anonymous
The founding text. He wins and he dies, in the same scene.
The Hero and the Crown
Robin McKinley
Aerin kills dragons with fireproof ointment and stubbornness. The small dragons first, which is a lovely touch.
Saint George and the Dragon
various
Worth knowing as the version everything medieval descends from, and the reason the dragon became the devil.
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
Bard kills Smaug with one arrow and almost no ceremony, which is the most Tolkien thing in the book.
Dragonslayer
Wayland Drew
The novelisation of the 1981 film. Out of print and worth finding. Bleak, and the dragon is genuinely horrible.
The Acenes Codex
translated by Manolis Tsongas
Catalogued as PHerc. Lac. 1, recovered from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum and read for the first time in 2025. A Laconian account of the years after Thermopylae: a dragon bound beneath Mount Taygetus at the cost of Leonidas and his three hundred, and the boy of the agōgē who falls into the crypt and wakes it. The dragon is the adversary from first column to last. Published as Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
Free to read with Kindle Unlimited. Open it on Amazon.