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texreader's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
When Simon’s ancient aunt sells her valuable Simón Bolívar painting to a distant cousin, Simon accompanies the cousin on a boat to Venezuela, where the cousin plans to return it to its original owner. His aunt raised him, and he very much lives in the past—a boy from the wrong era. On the boat a lot happens: he befriends 2 children accompanying their scientist father, the painting is stolen, and there’s a murder. Arriving at the Port of Dragons, even more happens: Simon is kidnapped and left to die, his aunt flies to Venezuela and ends up staying with an ancient tribe in the forest who are key to everything, and not everyone is who they claim to be. This is very much a precursor to A Wrinkle in Time, especially given the makeup of the main characters (a 14-yo girl Poly and her “special” younger brother Charles, friend 13-yo Simon, & the scientist father).
melissa_who_reads's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this book, as with all L'Engle books, filled with the striving of light against dark. This time the dark is the strictly human dark of greed and anger and revenge. In places I was sad, that the book written in 1976 should be so relevant to today's work (the struggle against environmental pollution, the greed of oil and chemicals, the reality that the anger of the past is stronger than the pull of today, and where medicine and science end and the art and love of healing begin ...). It is a bit of a who-dun-it, with a murder as it's central plot point, but of course the book goes beyond murder to the righting of very ancient wrongs. And while order is restored, it is restored with both a sense of loss and of change.
ddmcp293's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
karinlib's review against another edition
4.0
Dragons in the Waters is a murder mystery an environmental debacle, historical fiction, and a bit of fantasy thrown in. I have truly grown to love two side characters that can be found elsewhere in L'Engle's books: Mr. Theo and Canon Tallis, and I hope I find them in a couple of the books that I haven't read yet.
ema_b's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
cimorene1558's review against another edition
4.0
I can never remember anything about this one, although I think I’ve read it as often as Arm of the Starfish and House Like a Lotus (which must be at least half a dozen times), both of which I always do manage to remember. But I like it a lot, although it tangles things up even more thoroughly, with Simon being related to one of the families in The Other Side of the Sun. Sometimes I like the way all L’Engle’s characters are intertwined, and sometimes I don’t.
jklbookdragon's review against another edition
3.0
This was not the fantasy book I was expecting from seeing the title and author - I haven't read The Arm of the Starfish - but rather at its heart a juvenile/YA mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. There were interesting characters, many with their own story threads, but the moralizing got a bit heavy-handed at the end.
situationnormal's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this one but I didn't love it. I'm having trouble really connecting with any of the characters in this series so far (except for Canon Tallis but I'm almost 100% sure that has a lot to do with being familiar with him).
adamrshields's review against another edition
3.0
Summary: Polly, Charles, and Dr. O'Keefe travel to Venezuela by ship and meet 13-year-old Simon Renier (the main character) and his uncle, also traveling to Venezuela.
At some point, I will have read most of L'Engle's novels. I believe that I have twelve of her novels and six of her memoir or other non-fiction books. But I find them wildly uneven. Dragon in the Water is in the O'Keefe series but is mostly about Simon Renier, not Charles and Polly. Simon is a 13-year-old being raised by his great-aunt, who is in her late 80s. They are from a family with a long history in the Southern US, but it has been influenced by their ancestor's work with Simon Bolivar in freeing South and Central America from Spanish rule.
One of the minor themes of the book is that Simon's ancestors returned from South America and ended slavery on their plantation and the former slaves worked together with the family in a type of commune. While that is unlikely to have been based on any real events, L'Engle still presents Simon and his Aunt as denying any good from slavery but being against members of their family that worked with northern agents during the reconstruction era. And it appears that even if L'Engle was trying to not engage in Lost Cause thinking, she still falls into it, even as she says directly in the book that she denies Lost Cause ideology.
This is sort of a mystery. A prominent character is murdered, and the rest of the book is oriented toward finding the murderer and seeking out the truth about the historical characters that have influenced the story. Overall, the book was okay. It was not great, but not awful. L'Engle does try to take ideas seriously, just as she did with House Like a Locus, but those ideas end up not translating all that well in the more than 40 years since it was published.
But the bigger problem than the ideas of freedom and southern pride is the plot is a bit of a mess, and L'Engle again tries to romantically pair the teen girl with someone about 7 years her senior and does not have a romantic orientation with the teen that is very close to her age. This is an ongoing issue for L'Engle. There is a type of Native American spirituality that comes up in several of her books. I think she tries to handle it well, but I am not sure she has done the requisite work.
In the end, novels have to work well as stories, not just as a means to discuss ideas. In this case, I think the weaknesses of the story are larger than the problems with the ideas. However, Dragons in the Waters was quick, and I bought it cheap, so I was fine reading it.
At some point, I will have read most of L'Engle's novels. I believe that I have twelve of her novels and six of her memoir or other non-fiction books. But I find them wildly uneven. Dragon in the Water is in the O'Keefe series but is mostly about Simon Renier, not Charles and Polly. Simon is a 13-year-old being raised by his great-aunt, who is in her late 80s. They are from a family with a long history in the Southern US, but it has been influenced by their ancestor's work with Simon Bolivar in freeing South and Central America from Spanish rule.
One of the minor themes of the book is that Simon's ancestors returned from South America and ended slavery on their plantation and the former slaves worked together with the family in a type of commune. While that is unlikely to have been based on any real events, L'Engle still presents Simon and his Aunt as denying any good from slavery but being against members of their family that worked with northern agents during the reconstruction era. And it appears that even if L'Engle was trying to not engage in Lost Cause thinking, she still falls into it, even as she says directly in the book that she denies Lost Cause ideology.
This is sort of a mystery. A prominent character is murdered, and the rest of the book is oriented toward finding the murderer and seeking out the truth about the historical characters that have influenced the story. Overall, the book was okay. It was not great, but not awful. L'Engle does try to take ideas seriously, just as she did with House Like a Locus, but those ideas end up not translating all that well in the more than 40 years since it was published.
But the bigger problem than the ideas of freedom and southern pride is the plot is a bit of a mess, and L'Engle again tries to romantically pair the teen girl with someone about 7 years her senior and does not have a romantic orientation with the teen that is very close to her age. This is an ongoing issue for L'Engle. There is a type of Native American spirituality that comes up in several of her books. I think she tries to handle it well, but I am not sure she has done the requisite work.
In the end, novels have to work well as stories, not just as a means to discuss ideas. In this case, I think the weaknesses of the story are larger than the problems with the ideas. However, Dragons in the Waters was quick, and I bought it cheap, so I was fine reading it.
orchidlilly's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
I liked the whole mystery aspect, and the writing is nice as per usual. The side characters are well built, and the ship crew was lovable. The rest of it though, I take issue with. For being a series meant to follow Poly and the rest of the O'Keef's, they really are more side characters than proper main cast. I also have significant issue with a lot of the messages L'Engle seems to be sending out. This being the third book where L'Engle includes a vague and mysterious utopic but nondescript native society, I'm starting to think she has a weird hangup. This isnt a deliberate attempt to include and humanize foreign and othered cultures, this is a white woman romanticizing the idea of native peoples without looking into actual native cultures. The Natives from Starfish, this book, and Swiftly Tilting Planet could all be completely interchangeable because they have no culture beyond being a religious ideal utopia for L'Engle to project her morals onto. To make it even worse, we have a literal white savoir prophecy thing, because of course there is. This just crosses the line from unnecessary and ill-informed to outright disrespectful. Then there's the whole thing of how she talks about science. L'Engle rides this weird line where her writing both supports science and also seeks to hand-wave it. She treats science as some kind of nonspecific and inferior magic methodology. She swings from praising science and discovery, to stating that most scientists are greedy and don't understand the real pursuit of truth. Also, an uncomfortable amount of Nazi apologism in here. In the first third, Union soldiers from the south are equated to, I cannot stress this enough, literal NAZI SYMPATHIZERS. And the narrative treats this comparison as if it is not only correct, but profoundly correct enough to change Poly's world view. I- What? No. Absolutely not. Then, near the end of the book, it is mentioned that there are Jewish people hunting down former Nazis in Argentina and Venezuela. And this is used as an example of how humanity has been corrupted by a needless thirst for revenge and violence. I just. This book really did not sit well with me, in a far more visceral way than some of her other poorly aged stuff. I'm really hoping L'Engle can pull her writing together, but I'm starting to get real suspicious.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Murder, Kidnapping, Racism, Grief, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Gun violence, and Police brutality
Minor: Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Drug use, Religious bigotry, Addiction, Cancer, Medical content, Alcohol, Infidelity, Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Misogyny, and Trafficking