A review by lostcanticles
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

2.0

First book I read by Kelly Barnhill was the Crane Husband, which I thought was quite good. Still took me a while to decide to pick this up, and to be honest I could have done without. The feeling after eating something that didn’t taste good then immediately looking for something better to battle it away was how I felt after finishing this. I thoroughly appreciated the themes of the book, the idea behind it, what it wanted to convey and all, but I didn’t like the execution. 

Actually, I enjoyed the first half and expected to give this a higher rating. The more I progressed though, the more I found that I’m not taking anything seriously anymore and I couldn’t properly explain why. Aside from the narrative being quite repetitive, the “dragoning” fell flat for me.

I mean, you suddenly got dragons carrying purses, sewing, baking, knitting, etc. Where did the rage go…

Maybe this disappointment had a lot to do with my own expectations going in, especially with the dragons. Maybe I just expected too much.