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A review by emrysmerlyn
The Century's Scribe by Brendan Walsh
4.0
I would like to thank this book for gifting me with this image of a book-loving dragon: “Excited, he clutched the book against his snout, devouring the words with his tail flapping like a puppy’s.” My life is ever so slightly better for having read that sentence—I smiled from ear to ear.
I have a soft spot a mile wide for good dragon stories.
This book offers some really compelling world-building as it follows and intertwines three distinct storylines and two different worlds. We start out with a dragon, perfectly content with the life he’s leading and the stories he reads. We meet Dreden, a university student who is starting to tire of the depiction in his life as he hangs out with the same two friends and does the same few things in endless repeat. We meet Cipre, an editor whose love of reading is being tested as every new submission seems like a paler rendition of themes done better and more vibrantly by authors who came before. How do their lives and stories fit together across the space between worlds?
The characters:
Minkompa is an excellent dragon who loves books.
Dreden is a student at a university where his father teaches as a professor. His two best friends are fellow students Chanin and Gerrika. He is a bright student, but extremely arrogant and self-absorbed with his own intellect.
Chanin is a human woman with a strained relationship with her overprotective parents. (a bit unfortunately, the text tends to focus a bit heavily and negatively on the fact that her appearance is not traditionally feminine)
Gerrika is a Aveho, a species of sentient avian-like creature. His father is extremely traditional and doesn’t like that Gerrika spends so much time with humans.
Cipre is an editor who works for a major publishing company that’s been on a slow slide away from being major—with profits falling month after month—and though she loves books, she is starting to get burned out by the lack of originality in the submissions that she reviews.
Dreden and his friends presented a small revelation for me. They live in something of a post-apocalyptic landscape, with much of their country now infertile as a result of an ominously expanding fog of colorful gas, known as the Sunitian Sea, looming over formerly arid farmland. Their boredom is unexpectedly relatable in our own unprecedented times ; seven or eight months ago I certainly would have had a hard time believing that living under a literal cloud of impending doom could be boring, but six months of soft-quarantine while the world falls to pieces and I now have a fresh respect for boredom in the face of catastrophe.
Some really neat world building is on display, and I look forward to seeing how the story concludes. (I so wish it had not been broken into two parts; rather than standing alone, this book is very much a part of a whole.)
I want to thank NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for granting my request for a review copy of this book.
Implicit Bias Note:
Could do without the “the color of his skin was closer to the brown of mud than to the white of snow” the phrasing has unpleasant racial connotations - would be enhanced by less weighted terms or at least without the juxtaposition with whiteness. A minor quibble, but one that threw me off a bit. It is clear that such a tone isn’t really in keeping with the narrative, as the book makes a clear effort at creating diverse and inclusive worlds, with nods to the ways that it’s minorities, like the avehos, fit into this world (for instance, avoiding more plot critical examples, when Gerrika says, “I swear, even for a town like ours, they seem to forget that avehos have written plays too. Everything is always by a human.”). A small handful of similar off-tone moments are scattered throughout.
I have a soft spot a mile wide for good dragon stories.
This book offers some really compelling world-building as it follows and intertwines three distinct storylines and two different worlds. We start out with a dragon, perfectly content with the life he’s leading and the stories he reads. We meet Dreden, a university student who is starting to tire of the depiction in his life as he hangs out with the same two friends and does the same few things in endless repeat. We meet Cipre, an editor whose love of reading is being tested as every new submission seems like a paler rendition of themes done better and more vibrantly by authors who came before. How do their lives and stories fit together across the space between worlds?
The characters:
Minkompa is an excellent dragon who loves books.
Dreden is a student at a university where his father teaches as a professor. His two best friends are fellow students Chanin and Gerrika. He is a bright student, but extremely arrogant and self-absorbed with his own intellect.
Chanin is a human woman with a strained relationship with her overprotective parents. (a bit unfortunately, the text tends to focus a bit heavily and negatively on the fact that her appearance is not traditionally feminine)
Gerrika is a Aveho, a species of sentient avian-like creature. His father is extremely traditional and doesn’t like that Gerrika spends so much time with humans.
Cipre is an editor who works for a major publishing company that’s been on a slow slide away from being major—with profits falling month after month—and though she loves books, she is starting to get burned out by the lack of originality in the submissions that she reviews.
Dreden and his friends presented a small revelation for me. They live in something of a post-apocalyptic landscape, with much of their country now infertile as a result of an ominously expanding fog of colorful gas, known as the Sunitian Sea, looming over formerly arid farmland. Their boredom is unexpectedly relatable in our own unprecedented times ; seven or eight months ago I certainly would have had a hard time believing that living under a literal cloud of impending doom could be boring, but six months of soft-quarantine while the world falls to pieces and I now have a fresh respect for boredom in the face of catastrophe.
Some really neat world building is on display, and I look forward to seeing how the story concludes. (I so wish it had not been broken into two parts; rather than standing alone, this book is very much a part of a whole.)
I want to thank NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for granting my request for a review copy of this book.
Implicit Bias Note:
Could do without the “the color of his skin was closer to the brown of mud than to the white of snow” the phrasing has unpleasant racial connotations - would be enhanced by less weighted terms or at least without the juxtaposition with whiteness. A minor quibble, but one that threw me off a bit. It is clear that such a tone isn’t really in keeping with the narrative, as the book makes a clear effort at creating diverse and inclusive worlds, with nods to the ways that it’s minorities, like the avehos, fit into this world (for instance, avoiding more plot critical examples, when Gerrika says, “I swear, even for a town like ours, they seem to forget that avehos have written plays too. Everything is always by a human.”). A small handful of similar off-tone moments are scattered throughout.