When Women Were Dragons in /r/Fantasy Discussion Group

Sep 01, 2021 Siavahda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: awesome-girls, issues-without-preaching, best-read-in-2022, first-person-pov, standalone, strong-women, advanced-reading-copy, dragons, lgbtqai-inclusive, lgbtqai-protagonists

HIGHLIGHTS
~femme rage (and joy) is draconic
~(but boys and trans people can be dragons too)
~too many grown-ups that should fall off a cliff
~suspicious knotwork
~scientists happy to be wrong
~dragons in space

Books that make you feel things are precious, and When Women Were Dragons made me feel so many things.

A lot of rage. (Not at the book!) A lot of joy. (Definitely at the book.)

In Barnhill’s world, women have a long history – stretching back into ancient times – of transforming into dragons when t HIGHLIGHTS
~femme rage (and joy) is draconic
~(but boys and trans people can be dragons too)
~too many grown-ups that should fall off a cliff
~suspicious knotwork
~scientists happy to be wrong
~dragons in space

Books that make you feel things are precious, and When Women Were Dragons made me feel so many things.

A lot of rage. (Not at the book!) A lot of joy. (Definitely at the book.)

In Barnhill’s world, women have a long history – stretching back into ancient times – of transforming into dragons when they are either capital-d Done, or filled with too much joy for a human body to contain. By the time the book starts, though, dragons are creatures of myth and legend, and surrounded by powerful taboos – they’re not to be spoken of, at all, by anyone, ever. And anyway, they’re definitely not real.

The Mass Dragoning of 1955 kind of blows that out of the water.

Or, well – you’d think it would. But the USA (and presumably other countries, although we don’t get much info on how the rest of the world reacts) just comes down harder on any mention of dragons, blacklisting scientists who try to study them, bringing journalists and news stations who try to report on them up on deviancy charges, and dragging activists in front of the Un-American Committee. It’s simultaneously extremely odd and extremely believable – on the one hand, it’s difficult to believe an entire country would work so hard, mostly successfully, to ignore the fact that thousands of people turned into dragons; on the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine why they’d want to. Facing the fact that the gender you subjugate could turn into dragons at any moment and flat-out EAT you??? I can see why that would make a lot of people very uncomfortable. And again and again throughout the book, talk of dragons is obliquely likened to talking about menstruation; it’s seen as a super feminine, somehow shameful, somehow gross thing that cis men are allowed to be horrified by. And thinking about how difficult it is to talk about periods even with a doctor…yep, I get it.

So I’m comfortable accepting this premise and moving on.

Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway! ...more

6 likes · Like · see review