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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.

The Keeper’s Six: A Review

The Beyond is ever-shifting, a fluctuating space of deadly light and impassible dark, filled with dangerous creatures. An adventuring party must consist of six members in order to venture across the Beyond. One Gate (to open the way and find the paths in the shifting wilderness), one Ghost (who becomes a silent, intangible scout once in the Beyond), one Shotgun (the party’s primary combatant), one Voice (the polyglot communications specialist), one Lantern (to light the way), and one Keeper (who remains behind at the group’s Keep, maintaining a stable entry platform that bridges the Beyond and the solid reality of the Realms. These six members make a Hex. Why six? Something about the magic that the dragons use to travel through the Beyond on their own can only be replicated by a group of six. Too many more than that, and the Beyond can destabilize even further. Too few, and you can’t be protected from the various monsters that call that nightmare place home.

Esther is a Lantern, but she’s semi-retired. Her Hex was suspended from operating a year ago, leaving the rest of her closest friends out of work. One night, a mysterious phone call wakes Esther, a single word from David, her son and the Keeper of the Hex. Immediately, she springs into action to gather the other members of the Hex and rally at the Keep to gather information. David, it seems, has been kidnapped, leaving his spouse Kai and their children behind in the unguarded Keep. Someone has captured him, and Esther must journey across the Beyond to find the party responsible. While Marianne, Gus, Lydia, and Faye all answer Esther’s summons, not all of the Hex is happy to see her again, especially since their suspension means that they’re not technically supposed to be operating in the Beyond at all.

So begins a covert mission to find David and bring him safely home. After all, what wouldn’t a parent do to protect their child?

Kate Elliott has crafted a phenomenal sci-fi novella with group mechanics reminiscent of a Dungeons and Dragons party. I’m fascinated by both the Beyond and the many Realms that it links, and I’m honestly sorry that this is my first time tackling one of her stories. I hope that she revisits this world again soon.

The Keeper’s Six is out today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My utmost thanks to Tordotcom for providing an eARC of this novella in exchange for a fair review.