To Shape a Dragon's Breath

To Shape a Dragon's Breath is an indigenous-centered story about a young woman Anequs who finds a rare dragon egg and is chosen by the resulting dragon; to avoid harm to her Masquisit community and her dragon, she agrees to register her dragon and go to an Anglish dragon school, whereupon she's confronted with all the racism, colonialism, death threats, shitty teachers, classism, homophobia and unexplained Anglish social conventions that you might expect. The world here is adjacent to our own except with strong Nordic and Germanic influences in history and mythology, on top of dragon-based industrialization (with a chemical/magical dragon breath system). This all works for me to keep the world simultaneously familiar but also fresh.

The story is really driven by Anequs' personality. She has a clear sense of her own values (protect her dragon, community, and friends) and doesn't hesitate to call people on their shit, to the dismay of "well-intentioned" teachers who are trying to show that she and her people can be "civilized". Despite plenty of pressure, she refuses the binary choices of assimilation and rebellion, and instead largely follows a path of her own values. The book feels at times adjacent to a comedy of manners, in its focus on Anequs trying to understand and navigate a bewildering set of unexplained Anglish social expectations.

I think the strength and weakness of this first book is that it is a school story at its heart. Despite an assassination attempt, the true climax of the book is overcoming an oppressive teacher's examination and gaining freedom to leave the school with a dragon for an extended period of time. It's also got a strong focus on friends, family, and school romances, although I'm not sure I would characterize this as a YA book.

Ultimately, I think the scope of this book was smaller than I expected it was going to be. Also, because of the nature of Anequs learning to survive an Anglish school, we see more of the Anglish world than we do of her own. Apart from a conflict between her father and her brother, her family and community seemed one-note positive and uncomplicated. This was only book one though, and there are many potential threads that this book can pick up going forward and I'm really looking forward to where this series goes from here.