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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.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Marvelous. The tree in Conor’s back yard comes walking to his window one night to tell him three tales. But Conor is not afraid, because there are worse things than monsters.

Ung, this was so good. Tiny, unsurprising. But genuinely amazing.

I’ve been reading a lot of books lately about – hmm. I was going to say ‘about bad things happening to people,’ but that doesn’t really cover it. The sort of books about bad things happening where it’s like when you’re standing waist deep in the ocean, and a big wave comes and slams you full-body down to the sand. Where you can see it coming and see it coming, but there’s nothing to do but take the hit. I’ve been reading books like that, about hurt like that. This book is like that.

Which will probably turn some people off, but it really shouldn’t.

The best thing about this book is not its richness, or its kindness, or even its cruelty. The best thing about this book, for me, is just how angry it is. I cannot remember the last time I read a book for kids that explicitly went out of its way to validate adolescent anger. Even destructive anger. Because sometimes it really is that bad, and sometimes there’s nothing to do but rage. And this book says that’s okay, that how you feel is not wrong, even when it’s violent or scary. And I think that’s pretty amazing.




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