tuftears | Steal the Book Title

Maybe I've posted about this before... But Steal the Dragon is too good a title for the book it's on.

Seriously, what's up with that?

A. Nothing gets stolen in the book description.
B. No dragon is involved.

Every time I see this book title, I imagine the book it should have been.

Point the first. Something has to get stolen... I don't mean breaking in to free captive or enslaved dragons. That's 'Free the Dragon', still a good idea but very different. I mean that it should fit the 'caper' model: a thief or other scruffian is presented with a problem, we as the readers are informed of the various difficulties, the thief assembles his or her resources, and proceeds with the heist. Nothing ever goes entirely as planned of course...

Point the second. There has to be a dragon. Don't just nickname an aircraft or spaceship 'Dragon'. It doesn't have to be an intelligent dragon; in fact making it intelligent raises completely legitimate questions of ethics and morality, legal status of monsters notwithstanding. It does have to be big, winged, scaled, and possessed of enormous destructive force and a temperament to suit. In other words, not the most cooperative thing in the world to steal.

I can even imagine the opening line of the book.

"I don't do livestock," the greatest thief in the world said. She ignored the aide's nervous tittering. "Artwork, bullion, documents, artifacts historical, magical, and religious, if it's portable and worth something to someone, I'll steal it. But I don't do people and I don't do beasts."