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A review by vagaybond
A Dragon of a Different Color by Rachel Aaron
5.0
personal enjoyment - 5 stars.
There's so many tropes that get me excited about these books - kooky seers, underdog heroes, general urban fantasy stuff. There's a lot of heady magic science in the series but it's explained in digestible ways, and there's
writing in general - 4.5? at least.
I don't know how you can make a crescendo of high stakes plot happen so much and so satisfyingly.
diversity/representation shit: potentially 0 stars, pending my own research.
(I know this is very critical for a 5 star review. Bear with me. I'm rating it 5 stars for the algorithm and the above reasons. These criticisms would knock it down to three stars overall tops. I'm not taking it into account because I don't know enough.)
I worry there's a lot of content involved in the books that I personally can't tell if are represented respectfully (specifically related to Indigenous cultures, Chinese cultures, other stuff) and I feel like it's really dubious At Best that the big bad evil character is literally named Algonquin. And that she is literally an ecofascist (death to humanity as revenge for environmental stuff, which is largely white supremacist bc it ignores decolonial environmental struggles). And that she is described with a guise of a "Native American woman"
Like, I don't know enough about the full details of the different stuff involved here.
It's possible there was a sensitivity reader, or that there's some kind of bigger implied meaning. She's named an *exonym* for an Indigenous group and dons the face of people she may have fucked over. But that all feels like a ridiculous long shot. The majority of people in general don't know that colonial forces have largely been the ones to pick the most commonly used names for Indigenous peoples. So it seems doubtful. It kind of strikes me that maybe the author liked the idea of people named after Indigenous groups and just did a slightly more amount of googling for something she saw as more unique.
But again! I really do not know! This just strikes me as gigantic red flags and I still need to do more research.
And it's not the only thing that gives me pause from being able to actually recommend this series.
There's just a lot of stuff that I don't feel it would be responsible for me to vouch for as good or okay to any of my friends.
There's also no (canon) queer or disabled representation. Bob has pinache and flamboyance but that's about all.
I love Marci and Julius. And the Heartstrikers that are involved in the plot actively at this point. I love a protagonist who can relate to that feeling of being happy to see people you care about enjoying their family... and being unable to help feeling sad that you don't get to have that.
I think there's also some issues w/r/t paradox of tolerance in these books but it's kind of growing on me that they seem to take restorative justice approaches to characters that have fucked up. A Steven Universe energy but with adult dragons and life or death magic and stuff like that.
And it's definitely more enjoyable to see characters prioritizing communication over hasty decisions and potential miscommunication for once.
There's so many tropes that get me excited about these books - kooky seers, underdog heroes, general urban fantasy stuff. There's a lot of heady magic science in the series but it's explained in digestible ways, and there's
writing in general - 4.5? at least.
I don't know how you can make a crescendo of high stakes plot happen so much and so satisfyingly.
diversity/representation shit: potentially 0 stars, pending my own research.
(I know this is very critical for a 5 star review. Bear with me. I'm rating it 5 stars for the algorithm and the above reasons. These criticisms would knock it down to three stars overall tops. I'm not taking it into account because I don't know enough.)
I worry there's a lot of content involved in the books that I personally can't tell if are represented respectfully (specifically related to Indigenous cultures, Chinese cultures, other stuff) and I feel like it's really dubious At Best that the big bad evil character is literally named Algonquin. And that she is literally an ecofascist (death to humanity as revenge for environmental stuff, which is largely white supremacist bc it ignores decolonial environmental struggles). And that she is described with a guise of a "Native American woman"
Like, I don't know enough about the full details of the different stuff involved here.
It's possible there was a sensitivity reader, or that there's some kind of bigger implied meaning. She's named an *exonym* for an Indigenous group and dons the face of people she may have fucked over. But that all feels like a ridiculous long shot. The majority of people in general don't know that colonial forces have largely been the ones to pick the most commonly used names for Indigenous peoples. So it seems doubtful. It kind of strikes me that maybe the author liked the idea of people named after Indigenous groups and just did a slightly more amount of googling for something she saw as more unique.
But again! I really do not know! This just strikes me as gigantic red flags and I still need to do more research.
And it's not the only thing that gives me pause from being able to actually recommend this series.
There's just a lot of stuff that I don't feel it would be responsible for me to vouch for as good or okay to any of my friends.
There's also no (canon) queer or disabled representation. Bob has pinache and flamboyance but that's about all.
I love Marci and Julius. And the Heartstrikers that are involved in the plot actively at this point. I love a protagonist who can relate to that feeling of being happy to see people you care about enjoying their family... and being unable to help feeling sad that you don't get to have that.
I think there's also some issues w/r/t paradox of tolerance in these books but it's kind of growing on me that they seem to take restorative justice approaches to characters that have fucked up. A Steven Universe energy but with adult dragons and life or death magic and stuff like that.
And it's definitely more enjoyable to see characters prioritizing communication over hasty decisions and potential miscommunication for once.