lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
Turning Darkness into Light

3/5. Further adventures in this secondary world fantasy about the rediscovery of dragons, long thought extinct. The granddaughter of the heroine of the previous books is a translator hired to translate newly discovered tablets that tell an origin story about dragons and humans, but political schemes are afoot.

This was pleasant and, if you care about linguistics more than I do, you will enjoy the extended translation passages complete with footnotes where the translators variously puzzle, squabble, and explicate. Mostly, though, I was distracted by the heroine’s dreadful lingering romantic longing for a man who is terrible and treated her terribly. Girl. Girl. I stopped having any interest in watching someone go down that road when I was maybe twenty-five. Luckily, the book does at least know he’s terrible, so there’s that.

A light book, even as it is about weighty things – great conflict, and how our beginnings and our stories shape the present.
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
A Natural History of Dragons, Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, In the Labyrinth of Drakes, Within the Sanctuary of Wings

3/5. Series of fictional memoirs of a dragon naturalist in a secondary fantasy world inspired by eighteenth-centuryish Europe/Asia/Africa.

Excellent fun adventure stories told in a brisk, ferociously dragon nerd style. These books neatly balance the travel and adventure and discovery with consciousness of gender, race, and class privilege and oppression. The fun isn't ruined, but it's definitely not unalloyed either. That's tough to pull off.

But perhaps the most unusual thing about these books, and the thing I appreciated most, is the presentation of a strong, abiding male-female friendship and partnership that starts out antagonistic, warms up, and is never even the tiniest bit romantic. It's amazing.

Content notes: Discussion of miscarriage.

Profile

lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
lightreads

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
456 78910
1112131415 1617
181920 21222324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 22nd, 2025 12:19 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios