Tuesday, December 09, 2014

2014 book 297

E.K. Johnston's The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim
I feel like a book with a title like this could go either way--in this case, it turned out to be awesome! It's set in Canada, in a world that is basically like ours, except dragons are real and plentiful. The titular Owen is the nephew of a famous dragon slayer (and also the son of a less famous one--he's been raised by his dad and his ridiculously cool lesbian aunts), who's recently moved to a small town, but the main character here is really narrator Siobhan, who is hilariously practical and matter-of-fact, and gets recruited to be Owen's bard. There are also a couple of other really cool high school girls. I loved how much this focused on friendship and hard work and bravery, and how there was basically no romance to speak of. And there's so much about history and society and industrialization, it really warmed my history major heart. Who has time to date when there are dragons flying everywhere??? The end is a real whopper, and I am very much looking forward to the sequel, out in March. A.

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