Burn by Patrick Ness

[lightreads]

Burn

3/5. A farmer and his mixed race daughter hire a dragon to clear fields for them in 1957. A teenaged assassin is on his way, though, because there's a dragon prophecy about the war that is coming.

This is a vividly-imagined, weird book. It lacks the gut punch quality of some of his other work, but it's doing all sorts of things with the various kinds and qualities of anger. That's worth talking about, particularly in the racist and homophobic context of this story. But I'm not sure this book holds up: the final thematic beat functions to simplify things, rather than complicate them, which is not what I expect out of Ness. Dragons are usually metaphors – for acquisitiveness in many stories, for greed in others – and I don't need the story to draw me a map and explain to me how gosh, did you realize these dragons are metaphors made flesh. Yeah bro, I got it. Teenagers aren't dumb, they'll get it too.

…And then I started wondering what the dragons in Pern externalize , and I was like uh, uncontrolled yet intensely heteronormative lust, duh.

Content notes: Racist violence and threats of racist sexual violence. Also lots of death.

Comments

[kiezh]

Regarding Pern dragons - you're not wrong about the uncontrollable heteronormative lust, but I'd argue that's not their primary symbolism. It's been a long while since I read the books, but if I remember correctly, we see a lot more Impressions than mating flights, and Hatchings are given a lot of story weight. It's a fantasy of being known completely and loved unconditionally, by a (really cool) being that will never leave you and by choosing you makes you Special. Companion animal fantasy! With wings and firebreathing, which make everything better.

The mating flight stuff is so weird in retrospect, like McCaffrey's id was at war with itself over Aliens Made Them Do It vs One True Destined Soulmate and she was really not in control of the results. We're told dragon lust is uncontrollable and indiscriminate, but in practice we only really see it resulting in permanent m/f pair-bonds that are portrayed as True Love.

Anyway, sorry for getting random Pern feels all over your review of a totally different dragon book.

[lightreads]

Lol you're not wrong about any of that. God, Pern. I wonder if I could even read any of those now. Maybe some of the harper books? Hmm.

[readerjane]

Have you ever read R.A. McAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon? Same author as the Lens of the World series, but set in our world with just brushes of fantasy. It takes place when computing was a baby industry, so that part comes off as quaint today, but the dragon in question is the Chinese scholar kind rather than the fire-breathing European kind. I like him a lot.

[lightreads]

I have not, interesting.