How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse recap

Fishlegs is bitten by a Venomous Vorpent and contracts Vorpentitis, a poisoning that kills to a schedule and for which there is exactly one cure: a potato, a vegetable unheard of in the archipelago, of which the only known specimen is a sacred relic of the Hysterics. Their island is frozen in, guarded by the sea dragon called the Doomfang, and ruled by Norbert the Nutjob, who kills visitors as a matter of course. Hiccup and Camicazi sail there anyway with Toothless. They are caught and brought in front of Norbert, Camicazi steals the potato, and the escape becomes a chase across the ice and the open sea with the Doomfang in it. Hiccup gets home in time and Fishlegs is cured. Norbert survives, having lost his tribe's treasure, and takes up a grudge against Hiccup that outlasts the book.

Previously: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is the undersized heir of the Hairy Hooligan tribe on Berk, still nothing like the Viking his father Stoick the Vast hoped for, and still quiet about the one thing that makes him remarkable, which is that he can speak Dragonese. His dragon Toothless is a small, greedy, disobedient Common or Garden dragon. His friends are Fishlegs, anxious and allergic to reptiles, and Camicazi, a tiny Bog-Burglar girl and expert thief he met while a prisoner of the Romans in the previous book. Hiccup has already saved Berk from a monstrous sea dragon, been down into the tomb of his pirate ancestor Grimbeard the Ghastly, and twice come off better than Alvin the Treacherous, who is still alive and still an enemy.

Fishlegs is bitten by a Venomous Vorpent, a small dragon whose poison brings on Vorpentitis. The illness is reliably fatal and it works to a timetable, so Fishlegs has days rather than weeks, and nothing the Hooligans know how to do will help him. There is one cure, and it is barely more than a rumour: a vegetable unknown in the archipelago, a potato, and the only one in existence belongs to the Hysterics. Their island lies behind frozen seas, it is guarded by the Doomfang, and their chief, Norbert the Nutjob, is not a man from whom anything can be politely requested. Hiccup and Camicazi set out for it regardless.

Hiccup, Camicazi and Toothless make the winter crossing to Hysteria with the time left to Fishlegs running down behind them. The Hysterics do not receive visitors so much as dispose of them, and Norbert the Nutjob shifts between civility and murderous fury without warning. The potato is not lying about to be picked up either: it was brought back from a voyage west by Norbert's father, Bigfoot Bjornsson, and the Hysterics treat it as a holy object. Taking it will need Camicazi's burgling rather than any kind of negotiation.

Hiccup and Camicazi are taken by the Hysterics and brought in front of Norbert the Nutjob, who is entirely willing to kill them and requires very little excuse. Camicazi gets the potato out of Hysteric hands, but the theft is discovered, and from that point Norbert's interest in Hiccup becomes personal. The escape runs from the Hysterics' hall out onto the ice and into the freezing sea, where the Doomfang is waiting and where the cold is as dangerous as the pursuit, while what is left of Fishlegs's time keeps shrinking.

Hiccup gets away from Hysteria with the potato, though not without ending up in the sea and face to face with the Doomfang, and reaches Berk in time. Fishlegs eats the cure and recovers from the Vorpentitis. Norbert the Nutjob survives the chase, having lost his tribe's most precious possession to a Hooligan boy, and comes out of it with a personal grudge against Hiccup that he intends to pursue for as long as it takes; he becomes the standing enemy of the books that follow. Hiccup comes home having done something no adult on Berk would have attempted, and, as usual, without much of his tribe understanding how he did it.

Hiccup, Camicazi and Toothless get off Hysteria with the stolen potato, survive the crossing and the Doomfang, and reach Berk before the poison has finished its work. Fishlegs eats the cure and recovers from Vorpentitis. Very few people on Berk ever learn how any of it was managed. Norbert the Nutjob comes out of the affair alive, minus the sacred object his father brought back from the west and with a fixed personal hatred of Hiccup, which makes him the enemy carried forward into the next book. Nothing about Hiccup's own position changes: he is still the smallest and least Viking-like member of his tribe, still keeps Dragonese to himself, and still has a dragon who takes instruction from nobody. His friendship with Camicazi and Fishlegs is the one thing the book leaves visibly stronger than it found it.