Scan barcode
A review by bisexualwentworth
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.
If you know me at all, then you'll know that I am currently on a quest to find good books with both dragons and queer characters, so naturally I was very excited for this one. And it definitely delivered on the sapphics + dragons front, but I'm not totally sure it delivered as a book.
When Women Were Dragons is mostly the fictional memoir of a girl named Alex who grows us just after the Mass Dragoning of the 1950s, when thousands of women spontaneously turn into dragons, many of them burning down their homes and/or eating their husbands.
Dragoning is a vehicle for female rage and for these characters to find freedom, and I thought that the actual dragon parts of the book were fascinating and compelling. Alex's story is interspersed with various news articles and studies about the dragons, and I found all of them more compelling than her actual fake memoir stuff.
It wasn't that I disliked Alex as a character. I thought that her whole arc was a fascinating study in internalized misogyny and parental abuse and gaslighting. I loved her relationship with her sister. I liked that she was a sapphic woman in STEM. If this book had been straightforward historical fiction, I probably would have liked Alex's stuff more, but I cannot express how frustrating it was to read a book about dragons where the main character doesn't believe in dragons until about 3/4 of the way through. Alex was also very Not Like Other Girls, but that was definitely the point.
I very much think the author accomplished what she set out to with this book. I just also think that it could have done a lot more.
Misc things I liked:
If you know me at all, then you'll know that I am currently on a quest to find good books with both dragons and queer characters, so naturally I was very excited for this one. And it definitely delivered on the sapphics + dragons front, but I'm not totally sure it delivered as a book.
When Women Were Dragons is mostly the fictional memoir of a girl named Alex who grows us just after the Mass Dragoning of the 1950s, when thousands of women spontaneously turn into dragons, many of them burning down their homes and/or eating their husbands.
Dragoning is a vehicle for female rage and for these characters to find freedom, and I thought that the actual dragon parts of the book were fascinating and compelling. Alex's story is interspersed with various news articles and studies about the dragons, and I found all of them more compelling than her actual fake memoir stuff.
It wasn't that I disliked Alex as a character. I thought that her whole arc was a fascinating study in internalized misogyny and parental abuse and gaslighting. I loved her relationship with her sister. I liked that she was a sapphic woman in STEM. If this book had been straightforward historical fiction, I probably would have liked Alex's stuff more, but I cannot express how frustrating it was to read a book about dragons where the main character doesn't believe in dragons until about 3/4 of the way through. Alex was also very Not Like Other Girls, but that was definitely the point.
I very much think the author accomplished what she set out to with this book. I just also think that it could have done a lot more.
Misc things I liked:
- Sapphic polyamorous dragons!
- All of the later stuff with the dragons was generally really interesting
- Fuck the dad oh my god (compliments to the author)
Misc things I did not like:
- Dragoning is a metaphor for menstruation for a LOT of this book. That's fine, but it made the later attempts at including trans women feel kind of hollow
- Are all of the dragons white? People of color are mentioned in this book, but all the dragons we meet are former white women
Anyway, just don't expect this sapphic dragon book to actually be about the dragons and instead expect it to be about a teen girl who loves math and has massive amounts of internalized misogyny.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Misogyny, and Death of parent
Moderate: Grief, Homophobia, and Cancer