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Tag Archives: academia

To Ride a Rising Storm: A Review

The much-awaited sequel to To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is here at last! When Moniquill Blackgoose’s queer indigenous dragon rider novel was released in May of 2023, I was thrilled at the idea of getting a follow-up book. How could I not want to spend more time in that world?

Anequs and her dragon, Kasaqua, have made it through their first year of school at Kuiper Academy. Due to Anequs’s successes and skill, she has been allowed to take Kasaqua back home from the city of Vastergot to the small island of Masquapaug. They are accompanied by Theod, the only other indigenous student at Kuiper, and his dragon, Copper. However, neither of them is free from Anglish oversight now that an outpost has been formally installed on Masquapaug.

Anequs is torn. She knows that Theod has feelings for her, and she reciprocates most of them. She is also attracted to Liberty, a servant at Kuiper academy, and Anglish society would frown on their relationship for both class and gender reasons. Anequs would love to be able to marry both of them, as is relatively common on Masquapaug, but utterly unheard of in Anglish culture. Pressure is being placed on her and Theod as the dragoneers to help the people of Masquapaug and the other nearby islands to push back against Anglish overreach.

The world around Anequs is changing, though, in part due to her presence in it. People are more afraid of her and Kasaqua than ever before. Her opposition to white supremacists has resulted in many students withdrawing from Kuiper Academy in protest, but at the same time, there are now more female students enrolled at one time than ever before. She’s forced to be apart from Kasaqua more often, as the dragon has grown too large to be able to stroll along at her heels through the halls of the school (although she should soon be large enough for Anequs to ride comfortably).

Monequil Blackgoose’s world remains just as fascinating as it was on the first go around. I love the way an alternate history has been woven to reflect how the world would have developed had dragons actually existed. Characters insert the stories they are telling to one another throughout the book, adding a great level of depth to the mythology of the world. Anequs remains steadfast in her determination to live life the way she intends to do, and she has quickly become one of my favorite protagonists in fantasy fiction.

To Ride a Rising Storm hit store shelves last month, 1/27/26. I’m sorry for the delay in getting this review out to y’all, but life has been *a lot* these last few weeks. My utmost thanks, though, as always, to NetGalley and Del Rey for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath: A Review

Anequs is a young Indigenous woman born and raised on the island of Masquapaug, far from the colonizing influence of the Anglish people. After spotting a Nampeshiwe, one of the dragons once common in the area, she quickly goes home to tell her family what she has seen. Uncertain if it was really there or just a vision, she ventures back out the following day and finds not the adult dragon, but a Nampeshiwe egg—the first one seen in generations.

When the baby Nampeshiwe hatches in front of the entire community of Masquapaug, she chooses Anequs to be her bonded partner. Anequs names her Kasaqua and becomes the first Nampeshiweisit (dragon partner) in the memory of anyone on the island. Now Anequs would’ve been perfectly content to stay in her family home and raise the dragon there until Kasaqua, in a moment of fear and pain, releases her breath weapon. Seeing the raw destructive power even a baby dragon possesses convinces Anequs to follow her older brother’s advice and apply for Kuiper Academy, the Anglish dragoneer school in the distant city of Vastergot.

Soon, Anequs is off to another world, one where the white men control everything from how history is taught to who gets to be paired with a dragon. The school accepts her application, but the threat of death for Kasaqua if she can’t learn to be tamed to their standards looms over everything.

Anequs doesn’t fit in at the school, since she wasn’t raised in Anglish society. She doesn’t know the rules that she’s supposed to follow, and so she rapidly befriends the other “misfits” of sorts, including an autistic student (in one of the most accurate and sympathetic portrayals I’ve ever encountered in literature), the one other Indigenous dragoneer, and one of the laundry maids. She spurns the use of the assigned surname Aponakwesdottir, insisting that the only name that she needs is Anequs. She can read and write, which is more than many of the white students and professors expect of her. In short, neither Anequs nor Kasaqua are what the students and staff and Kuiper anticipated. Nor is the school what Anequs had hoped for, with the narratives and views of white men dominating every aspect of the society. Now she must navigate adolescence, dragon-rearing, school, and an openly hostile culture that would prefer her not to exist.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is brilliant. The world is simultaneously strange and familiar, set on an Earth in the early industrial age with technological innovations driven by dragons, who can break matter down into component elements with their breath. The breadth and depth of the worldbuilding is staggering, with tremendous care put into the little details. The scientific processes are as thoroughly explored as any contemporary fantasy’s magic system, with almost every aspect having a real-life counterpart. I loved following Anequs as she learned about the world beyond the boundaries of her island, and I can’t wait to come back to the world of the Nampeshiweisit.

Moniquill Blackgoose’s To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is out in the wild today. Go catch yourself a copy.

My utmost thanks to Random House/Ballantine and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Babel: A Review

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution is not only a hell of a title, it’s a hell of a book. Author R.R. Kuang (The Poppy War) has produced a brilliant alternate history in which The British Empire rose to power utilizing magic based on silver and linguistics. In the 1820s, a young man from Canton (Guangzhou) is taken from his life on the docks where he picked up bits of language from sailors and raised in London by a man named Professor Lovell. Re-named Robin Swift by his own love of English literature, the boy is drilled with lessons on Greek and Latin, preparing him for a new life at Oxford University.

When Robin arrives at Oxford to take his place at the Translation Institute, however, nothing is what he expected. His neighbor, Ramy, is immediately welcoming (perhaps because they’re both outsiders by virtue of their foreign birth), while the rest of the residents of their hall are less so. A dark conspiracy seems to be building involving a looming war between England and China, and Robin’s skills in the languages of both nations will play a part, whether he wants them to or not.

Kuang’s latest work is a brilliant novel exploring the dark sides of academia and colonization. Robin’s conflict between his heritage and his upbringing mirror the greater struggle between England and China. Class warfare and linguistics blur together as Robin navigates a world that is simultaneously much larger than he knew and much smaller than he could have imagined. You’ll have to read it to believe it.

Babel is out on store shelves as of yesterday. Check it out.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.