Serpentine by Cindy Pon

Serpentine by Cindy Pon

2/5. YA about the sixteen-year-old foundling girl serving as handmaiden in a wealthy household, except whoops she's half serpent demon.

Dislike. I should have liked this – it's an Asian setting rather than medieval europe, there's a secondary lesbian romance subplot! – but I just . . . didn't. But it's the sort of dislike where I sighed a lot in boredom and kept asking questions about the paper thin worldbuilding, and not the sort that would, say, make me not want teenage girls to read this.

Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell

Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell

3/5. Sweet young adult about the princess born with a clubfoot who goes on the run with her handmaiden and an apprentice dragonslayer after her cousin tries to take control of her tiny holdings.

Perfectly middle grade, which means pitched just right for the age range and a little too simple for my complete enjoyment. And I object a little bit to the heroine's journey in this. She is ready to give up her kingdom because so many of her subjects dislike her disability and treat her badly because of it, and the book takes her on a journey to discover that she was wrong and some of them really do love her anyway. And I just . . . I'm not really interested in these (extremely popular) narratives. I mean, if a person with disabilities perceives ableism in her community and is harmed by it, I don't think she's the one who needs to go on a journey of self-discovery, you know?

But this book surprised me in the last third. Dragons lurk throughout its pages, alternately frightening and pathetic, but I wasn't sure what the dragons were really for. Then they were for something, and that something was a metaphor about feminism and power and anger and restraint. Nice landing, is what I mean.