Review of To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is a fantasy novel set in alternative North America where both the history of Europe and North America has taken a drastically different path because the Norse tamed dragons in the viking age.
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My review of To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
A wonderfully paced YA fantasy novel about a young woman who imprints on a dragon and is send off to dragon school. She has to navigate a new society that sees her people as uncivilized. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath has great characters, worldbuilding and pacing. It kept me reading into the night. If you enjoy stories set in boarding schools, dragons or about colonization, then this is one to read.
Title: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath
Author: Moniquill Blackgoose
Series: Nampeshiweisit #1
Genre: Young adult, fantasy, steampunk, alternative history
Themes: Dragons, boarding school, indigenous people, oppression, colonization
Opening sentence:
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is the best and most most capturing YA novel, that I have read in a long time. The pacing of the story kept me up all night and made me want to read rather than be social with my friends and family.
The protagonist Anegus is a wonderfully competent character. At fifteen she is given responsibility in her role and is very good at it. This becomes even more obvious when she meets her peers of the dragon academy. She has quite limited interactions with the wider world, which does cause her to make some missteps because she does not understand the political implications of the situation she finds herself in. So even though she is a highly competent character in both a practical and academic sense, she is far from perfect.
Speaking of greatly written characters. The adults are written as full characters and a few of them switch roles throughout the text – going from antagonist to helper and the whole relationship is complicated. It does a great job of not slotting everyone from one ethnicity into the same kind of role – all the white people are not the same and neither is the first nation folk.
I really enjoyed the worldbuilding in To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. It is such an interesting alternative history – especially the use of language is great. The idea of how European history has been shaped differently by dragons and how that is shown throughout the story is great. I really enjoyed using the lessons that Anegus gets as exposition and how she is constantly reacting to the version of history that is taught and that Blackgoose shows that different cultures remembers history quite differently.
The school setting places a large role in the narrative – like in many boarding school novels. Both the academic part of the school life and the social aspects gets to play a significant role, which is lovely to see. Anegus does not have an easy time making friends within the student population, because most of them see her as a savage outsider. She does however forge friendships in other places. Her family and home community is very important to her and the story. It is very much a story where the social aspects gets to take center stage.
I can’t wait for the second book! You should definitely read it.
The stats: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath
Published: 2023 by Tor.com
Length: 511 pages
Read: July 23 2024
Author: Female, bipoc, American
The protagonists: Female, bipoc, student
Content warnings: Racism, colonization, ableism, homophobia and violence.
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