Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Kiedy kobiety były smokami

Ugh 😫 the first half of this book was delightful. The middle was a challenge, and the end complicated.

The premise is unique. In the 50s, a bunch of women turned into dragons, and they left. Alex, the primary's story, is one of remembering and forgetting as her culture remembers and forgets.

If you read it as a memoir, the story flows like water.

It centers rage, trauma, and healing, and it leans into an idea that if women had more power the world would be better. I find this challenging since colonialism and white supermacy wield white feminism as both a shield and a knife.

It's a book I'm going to be thinking about for a long time. It is both tragic and hopeful, sad and sweet, and creative and destructive.

I can't get over the how it centers white people in stories of black and brown people though. If recommend it to a specific type of reader.

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lynxpardinus's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective

4.25

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sarahholliday's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Despite uneven pacing, this book is a beautiful meditation on female rage and the society-wide implications of shame and silence. The beautiful writing revealed a thoughtful story filled with wonderfully complex and nuanced characters.

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sambortle's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.5

"I imagined myself unleashed, unhooked, unraveled, an explosion of heat and rage and frustration. My bones felt hot. My skin felt tight. The air in my lungs seemed to sizzle.”

“It was, again, unmentionable. And the world kept its eyes on the ground.”

Newbery Award-winner Kelly Barnhill makes her adult debut with the speculative WHEN WOMEN WERE DRAGONS. Barnhill’s fantastical novel is being billed as a rollicking feminist tale, and while this is true, it undersells much of the novel’s complexity. DRAGONS is a story of a feminine awakening and uprising, yes, but it is also a story of rage, memory, trauma, and what happens when a country’s response to tragedy is a collective silencing.

Set in an alternate 1950’s America, DRAGONS centers around The Mass Dragoning of 1955, in which hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” women sprouted wings, scales, and talons, and took to the skies. They left burned up houses, offices, husbands, and bosses. They left children. They left, seemingly, for good. Alternating between first person memoir and a collection of primary documents, DRAGONS follows the story of Alex Green, who was just a child at the time of the Mass Dragoning. Despite knowing that she lost her beloved Aunt Marla to the transformation, Alex is forbidden to ask questions about where she went or why she suddenly gained a sister (who was, decidedly, never her cousin). Unfolding alongside Alex’s story is the larger story of a country’s collective refusal to reckon with its loss. Coverage of the Mass Dragoning is forbidden, with each fiery departure given its own coverup in the papers. Scientists attempting to study the dragonings are blacklisted and driven into hiding.

DRAGONS is a timely exploration of the transformative power of rage, love, joy, and sexuality, and a thoughtful commentary on their gendered understanding in society. More than that, it is a story of family, community care, and of self-actualization. You should 100% pick this book up if you enjoy literary fantasy, interesting story structures, or badass librarians defending scientific research against a government insistent on plausible deniability.

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kaitisbooknook's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Alex is a young girl growing up in the 1960s in a world much like our own, except for one key difference: in 1955 thousands of women simultaneously became dragons and flew from society to never be seen again. Her aunt was one of these women, but her family refuses to acknowledge her existence, much in the same way the government and the rest of the world refuse to discuss the event at all, or that women are still dragoning, and no one seems to know why.

This was one of my personally most anticipated releases of the summer, but I’m ultimately disappointed in the result. For me, one of the biggest failings of the novel was choosing to market this as adult fantasy, when the narrator is under the age of 18 for the vast majority of the story. Her age and limited world view gives the reader and incredibly narrow scope of the events of the time period, and a childlike outlook on all topics broached in the tale, including things like menstruation, spousal abuse, workers’ rights, sexual assault, gender identity and segregation — the final of these being the biggest failing of all.

Barnhill sets up the fight for “dragons’ rights” seemingly as a metaphor for the feminist movement (dragoning itself as a product of both feminine joy and female rage,) but events in this protest mimic exact occurrence of the civil rights movement, specifically segregation in the workplace and in school. This is hardly fleshed out at all, and race is only briefly mentioned, which would suggest that Barnhill is saying all women have faced an equal amount of oppression throughout history. This isn’t even a matter of opinion, it’s just factually incorrect. This is set in a fantastical world, but the mythology behind dragons is also never fully realized, so we have no choice but to treat this as if we are looking at American history, and ultimately it just does not work. I do believe Barnhill had good intentions, but it reads like someone who was only recently introduced to intersectional feminism and is not in a position to be educating others.

If you are looking for a sapphic fantasy romance as this novel seemed to be marketed across the internet, this is not the book for you. However, if you have little experience reading about female rage and feminist concepts as a whole, I do believe this is a good introduction to the topic, especially in a young adult framing.

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