When I was in Jr. High I read this book. It was a part of a series of books, I remember needing to search for like ever to be able to finally read them in order. I think there were four of them.
I can't remember the titles, much less the author, but I think it had something to do with "Dragon's Pearl" in there somewhere? Unfortunately any searches for that turn up a completely different book which is not at all what I'm looking for.
I remember it was about an Eastern type dragon whose pearl had been stolen and there was a quest to get it back. One of the main characters was some sort of monkey person, I think he was the narrator in at least one of the books. He kept saying, "A monkey's biggest weakness is his curiousity bump." I remember the phrase "curiousity bump" very distinctly because I thought it was a weird phrase.
Has anybody else read these books before? I need to know the title for something I'm doing and I'm going crazy over here not being able to remember the names of these books that I thought were SO FRIGGIN' AWESOME in Jr. High. I think the third book had something about a cauldron in the title because it was the first one I found while I had actually been looking for The Black Cauldron. If you can give me any leads on this I would be insanely grateful!
[I've tried searching for "Black Cauldron" which just turns up The Black Cauldron and "dragon's/dragon pearl" which turns up the other unrelated book, I've search Amazon as well and I just am not finding the series I'm looking for.]
[Edit] Found it!! Lawrence Yep's Dragon of the Lot Sea series! You guys are on the ball, thank you so much!