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I mentioned on tumblr lo these many days ago how much more difficult I find writing reviews for really good books than I do bad or ev

I mentioned on tumblr lo these many days ago how much more difficult I find writing reviews for really good books than I do bad or even mediocre ones. I am perfectly at peace putting so much effort into writing reviews for bad books or books I didn’t like or plain meh books: I firmly believe it is important to discuss why something worked or didn’t from both a prose/writing standpoint and an ideological one. I am equally comfortable with the attention this gets me and those books (well, okay, I wish I could remain a cryptid in the corners of the interwebz even if I have to admit to a certain contradictory thrill when people like my work). It is good to read things you don’t like. It is good to figure out why, and to be able to verbalize it. Plus, sometimes you’re surprised!

BUT. I find myself thinking: why am I more comfortable putting that effort into being, as some have described me, ‘a hater,� than I am putting that same effort into spreading joyful enthusiasm? Have I absorbed on some level that criticism must be unadorned by feeling? Why am I worried, on that same level, about people thinking I might be - gasp - happy? That I might like things? Being able to explain why you enjoy something or thought it was well done is just as important as being able to discuss the opposite. Is it, I wondered, staring at my five-star rating and ‘would give more than five stars if possible� shelving of this book but the blank review, a skill issue? Am I bad at writing reviews of good books?!

Well, I thought. That shit can’t stand, and it’s criminal not to let people know how good this book is. I think we need our standard review format.

HIT IT.

The Good

Part of my hesitation to write reviews of good books is that I’m afraid I’ll never shut up about them, and not in the way I never shut up about a couple of the truly terrible series and books I do readthroughs for on my blog. Those are kind of, AND ANOTHER THING. We return to the questions: skill issue? People can’t think I like things? I cut myself off in my Steelflower review when it was about to devolve into unhelpful complaining, surely I can control myself when spouting praise.

KASAQUA. Darling dragon. Baby. Hope for a civilization. Entire character unto herself. She doesn’t talk exactly, but we understand her personality and how entwined she is in Anequs� life, which leads to�

I said on tumblr that it is a shame To Shape A Dragon’s Breath keeps getting compared to Fourth Wing. I said I understand why - dragonriders! Magic boarding schools! - but that doing so was to essentially compare apples (delicious! Nutritious! Objectively beautiful, have y’all ever seen an apple tree laden with fruit?! My god, nature contains wonders!) to candy corn (wax and sugar that can be aesthetically pleasing and sometimes you have a craving, idk). I stand by this!

But I’m going to compare them anyway to more easily demonstrate a point or twelve about how fucking good To Shape A Dragon’s Breath is. 

I mentioned once or twice (okay talked extensively) in my review of Fourth Wing that while I liked the dragons and they were entertaining when they managed to finally show up and be on page, they were essentially utterly pointless within the book and narrative. Any action done or caused by a dragon could have an easy alternate reason/resolution, up to and including admittance to the magic boarding school. The dragons simply do not matter in terms of narrative or worldbuilding or character in Fourth Wing, and I still feel they distracted from and/or undermined the attempted messages, whatever those messages might have been.

In To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Kasaqua in particular and dragons in general do the opposite.

Not only does the book open with a dragon (another complaint of mine from Fourth Wing: I probably drove the tumblr folks bonkers with the number of times I reblogged the WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS post), dragons are everywhere. Not physically, unfortunately, due to commented upon and discussed rules, but in a very real way this book shows multiple societies shaped by dragon existence. Anequs may have to help shape Kasaqua’s breath, but Kasaqua, and indeed all the dragons, shape their riders and the world. Without Kasaqua and her mother there is no story, and even aside from Kasaqua’s mother’s existence being the inciting incident, this book is as shaped by the existence of dragons as the societies within it. If you were to try to remove Kasaqua, you could maybe (MAYBE) still eke out the basic plot, but you could not have the same story or the same characters. There would be a giant Kasaqua-shaped hole straight through the middle, and more holes as you removed more dragons because without them these societies lose shape and size and clarity (something that is touched on! Within the narrative! In the hope Kasaqua’s entire existence! Brings to the people of Masquapaug hope! Because previously all their dragons were murdered! Amongst all the other horrors visited upon them by imperialism).

When Kasaqua isn’t there, Anequs thinks about her. When she is there, she is given the same time and attention and dare I say dignity as any of the other characters, because Kasaqua is, as previously mentioned, herself a character.

All of this makes To Shape A Dragon’s Breath a dragon book, in a way books like Fourth Wing or Eragon or even (do NOT come for me) A Song of Ice and Fire simply� aren’t. While dragons sometimes serve important story elements in the aforementioned novels/series, the dragons in To Shape A Dragon’s Breath are part and parcel of a greater whole, living and breathing results (and causes!) of the society portrayed by the book.

BUT. A dragon book is not all To Shape A Dragon’s Breath is, though we would love it for that alone! To Shape a Dragon’s Breath deals with imperialism, classism, racism, ableism, sexism, probably a shitton of other isms that I don’t currently have the names for, and uniquely how they all intersect. We see the many interplays of oppression, most memorably through our main character Anequs and her squad (‘squad� implies a level of cohesion that isn’t totally accurate here but it’s not totally incorrect either? Interpersonal relationships are complicated! Shocker!)

There is not, however, any moment of ‘rising above� oppression. So often in books that address inequality (systematic or otherwise) there is still some undercurrents of making sure we the readers understand that this particular person from this oppressed culture can to the touchstones of the oppressor’s culture as well/better than the oppressors in exactly the same way, and usually in some sort of take that moment. Which is. Okay please bear with me, I’ve written this part three times and I’m still not sure I wrote it RIGHT, but hopefully y’all will get the gist.

What makes To Shape A Dragon’s Breath so unique in the way it addresses oppression and the intersection thereof is not only in the fact that it addresses it (though that is rare enough) but in the plain and unsensationalized way in which it is written. The societal blocks and snubs and backhanded compliments Anequs receives do not feel sudden or out of the blue. Her own and others� pain is not presented as entertainment (I realize how odd that sentence may seem when I am writing about a book read for entertainment, technically). Too often I read books where a hurt, systematic or otherwise, is visited upon a character only to have the narrative relay the harm (often physical) as either a hairtoss girlboss take that moment of firing back OR with the breathless glee of someone discovering a new kink they think is subversive and telling you about it in hushed tones. Look how terrible, a lot of books say, basically panting. Look at the paragraphs of detail describing the injury and the injuring!

(this is not, before anyone decides I’m accusing them of pissing on the poor, to throw shade at kink, but rather an ongoing part of my irritation with the way sex and titillation and violence are so often portrayed with the same whispery tee hee how FORBIDDEN tone in so much media these days. Embrace your kink. Talk frankly. Whatever. Your mileage will of course vary)

Anyway I don’t know. Maybe that’s helpful for some people. I always feel like I’m watching/reading misery porn that the author is really ¾±²Ô³Ù´Ç.Ìý

THE POINT HERE IS, because I have wandered from my original one: 

To Shape A Dragon’s Breath relays systematic and personal cruelties with a matter of fact frankness that removes doubt and sensationalism (I almost wrote voyeurism, but I’m not sure that’s fair to voyeurs) that often makes me, at least, feel that I am being invited to take some kind of pleasure, horrified or otherwise, in the relayed cruelties.

Society is sexist. Society is racist. Imperialist. Ableist. Classist. And this book shows that in a plain, unadorned way that does not allow people to shy away from our own culpability, whether in large or small or medium ways. Just because you do not take purposeful delight in benefitting from racist/sexist/imperialist/ableist/classist/etc ideology does not absolve you from the fact you have benefitted from and/or perpetrated it. The book also doesn’t allow for the excuse so many allow to be made for them, often by media: that if it’s ‘not that bad� then it’s not [insert ism here]. By only portraying GIANT UNSPEAKABLE EVIL WRONGS (described lovingly and at great length) as examples of isms, we are often allowed the excuse of ignorance. To Shape A Dragon’s Breath doesn’t do that. We are shown and expected to understand that small wrongs are still wrongs, all the teeny tiny building blocks that stack up into machines of systematic oppression are there. (there is a note around here in my notebook that I hadn’t had coffee yet this particular morning and I was struggling with words. In case you’re wondering at my process)

I’m going to revisit this in the conclusion. (not the coffee)

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the character work going on in this book further. Everyone is their own individual, and there are a lot of characters, from Anequs and Kasaqua to Theod and Copper to Marta and Magnus to Sander and Inga to Liberty to Niquiat to Grandmother to Frau - you get the point. I could probably give you a short description of each character named in the story and some who aren’t named at all. They are all distinct. Their actions and interactions all make sense within the framework of their character and society as shown on page. You’d think that would be a low bar to clear, and you’d be right because the bar for this sort of thing is currently in the earth’s core, but somehow so many books manage to limbo under it. This book didn’t so much step over the bar as clear it by boarding a moon rocket and taking off.

So uh. I guess here in ‘good� I have (at least tangentially?) covered plot, theme, character, sensitive handling� what’s left for the other sections?

The Meh

This section was, believe it or not, shorter when I handwrote the drafts. It wasn’t until looking something up and stumbling across the tvtropes (I KNOW I KNOW) character page that it got longer, but not, actually, because I found more to be meh about. I’m not even sure if this belongs in the meh section anymore if it even did in the first place.

I am a noted Lover of Friendship. I like to read about Unbreakable Friendships That Last Yea Unto Eternity. So saying that I wanted Anequs and Marta to be BFFs forever and ever is true, but saying it that way sounds like I am in some way faulting the book or author for not making that happen. I’m not. Marta as slightly less clueless privileged woman who nevertheless chooses the easy way out in pursuit of her own wellbeing (or perceived wellbeing) is realistic and, I think, part and parcel of what the book is showing us: privilege blinds you, often on purpose, often with your cooperation, to the wrongs of the society that gives you the privilege. Too often we do not choose to see the privilege we have because doing so is uncomfortable. This isn’t a book that’s going to decide to hand us-the-readers One Good White Woman (or even two, even if one of them is queer) so white readers can imagine ourselves in that position. That would undermine the entire point. 

So when I stumbled onto the tvtropes page, imagine my surprise that I kept seeing reassurances that Marta learns, or gets better, or is bffs with Anequs by the end. It feels like someone, somewhere, missed the point: I do think Marta grew and learned and developed, but I also think that the book was pretty clear on the fact that she still had miles to go before she slept. Maybe I’m being oversensitive or overcorrecting or something, but when I read the (many) paragraph-long trope explanations of Marta’s character on tvtropes, I felt� I’m not sure. Maybe like these particular readers were giving Marta-the-character more credit than I felt she deserved, or maybe because there were a lot of things about her being cluelessly racist but getting better ‘after she got to know Theod and Anequs� and like. Again. I’m not sure why you would have to get to know someone personally before you realized they were people with thoughts and opinions different than your own, let alone just worthy of human dignity? I’m not sure I’m saying this right, this bit didn’t even get three drafts. Hopefully I have conveyed some sort of point.

So why is this in the meh section, when it’s not the book I’m meh-ing but, I suppose, the fandom, myself included? Honestly it’s because I had to put something here, and while, again, I’m meh-ing myself as part of fandom, it’s hard not to run into fellow readers and be disappointed when you think some missed the entire point. 

The Bad

Listen. I typed my way through six single spaced handwritten notebook pages of good shit and half a page of meh shit that wasn’t even meh on the book’s part. I do however feel it is important to discuss what you feel could have been improved even in books you love, because acknowledging flaws or even just Maybe Not As Good As It Might Have Been parts is how you improve as a writer, reader, and reviewer.

Me @ me: so where it is then

Me @ me: give a girl a fuckin minute will you

After much consideration (a week’s worth! Y’all saw me talking about this on tumblr!) I have found something. Ready?

I can’t read the sequel yet.

Was the bad section a cop out? Probably. Is my lack of reviews for good books a skill issue? Possibly. Will I have to post the rest of this to tumblr because it was too long for goodreads?