A review by znvisser
To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This wasn’t the fastest read for me; I was a bit impatient for all world building (never my fave) and was happy when Anequs finally arrived in her new environment so the action could get started.

The world building is elaborate but all very…. Neat, I guess? Anequs is a flawless superior child being miles ahead in logic and intelligence from anyone in her new environment (yet her need to show this to everyone who already hates her for her heritage never leads to actual problems - except for me as a reader, being annoyed by her boring superiority); most geography, science and linguistics appear just slight variations of the actual world, and even the racism and kolonialism racisms and kolonialisms precisely as it does in the real world. 

In a way this is all fine - it probably made it all relatively easy to follow and helps laying ground for plot, but it also made all of it… quite unsurprising, at some time close to uninteresting? There was little friction, struggle or mystery, and it all just floats on (sometime there is drama over nothing and then it turns out to be… nothing indeed); it made me wish for accelerated plot development but we just kept learning new Anglish words for known concepts (I really would have preferred a glossary over the pronunciation guide). Maybe I’m just looking for more complexity than what YA is for; and these characters sure didn’t provide that, suffering from being either flat or incoherent.

However, it wasn’t not entertaining either: I was somehow invested enough to see where it would go, and it is a good set up for a further series - let’s see if enough of this sticks for me to be eager to pick that up by the time it comes out. But this did count a lot of pages for it to turn out not much more than a set-up for the actual story.
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