Bibliographic record
Abstract
Fforde, Jasper. The Last Dragonslayer. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2011. Print. Almost-16-year-old Jennifer Strange is caught in a unique situation. As an orphan and an indentured servant of Kazam Mystical Arts, an employment agency for the magically gifted, Jennifer suddenly finds herself running the agency due to the mysterious disappearance of her boss, Mr. Zambini. Even worse, magical power has been dwindling everywhere and rumors are swirling about the forthcoming death of the last dragon. Accompanied by her faithful Quarkbeast, Jennifer sets out to investigate these strange events, find Mr. Zambini, and stop the disappearance of magic from her world. Along the way, she becomes the central figure in a firestorm of media intrigue and faces the combined threats of fame, prophecies, jail, assassination attempts, and 16 marriage proposals. Known primarily for his adult novels, The Last Dragonslayer is Jasper Fforde’s first foray into fiction for teens; however, his trademark quirky humour, original thinking, and dry wit are present in abundance. Furthermore, Fforde’s characters are complex, well-drawn, and extremely relatable; in particular, Jennifer’s cool-headed intelligence and wry observations will appeal to teen girls and boys alike. Parents who (rightfully) lament the dearth of teen girl role models in YA fiction will enjoy handing this book to their daughters. There is no denying that Dragonslayer is complicated; Fforde never condescends to his young audience, and he pulls no punches when introducing and playing with complex ideas. However, Jennifer’s first-person narration ably guides readers through the wackiness of her world, making a convoluted, diverse, suspenseful plot ultimately, and satisfyingly, character-driven. This could be the best book your teen reads all year. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Amy PatersonAmy Paterson is a Public Services Librarian at the University of Alberta’s H. T. Coutts Education Library. She was previously the Editor of the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management and is very happy to be involved in the Deakin Review and the delightful world of children’s literature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.124 | 0.075 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".