To Shape a Dragon's Breath
by Moniquill Blackgoose
528pp (Trade Paperback)
My Rating: 8/10
LibraryThing Rating: 4.18/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.1/5

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To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose, the first book in a trilogy set in an alternate historical version of our world with dragons, was one of my favorite books published in 2023. Since I wanted to refresh my memory before reading To Ride a Rising Storm, the second book in the Nampeshiweisit trilogy that was released earlier this year, I decided to reread it and write a lengthier review than my previous best-of-the-year summary before continuing the series.

Fortunately, I found To Shape a Dragon’s Breath every bit as delightful as it was the first time I read it. Once again, I was a bit puzzled by just how much I enjoyed it since I tend to gravitate toward books with complex, messy characters dealing with internal conflicts, and this novel’s protagonist is very much the opposite: someone with a strong sense of self who comes close to being a bit too neat and perfect at times, though I felt this fit her background and character since she doesn’t quite cross the line into unbelievably faultless. I suppose my love of academic settings, fantasy of manners, and characters who call out ridiculous social rules supersedes my love of deeply flawed protagonists when handled as well as Blackgoose did in her award-winning debut novel—and it actually ended up being refreshing to follow a self-assured character helping those who are still trying to figure out who they want to be in this case.

Though published through an adult speculative fiction imprint, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath has received recognition in both young adult and adult fiction award categories. It tells the story of a young Indigenous woman who attends a college-like academy for people bonded with dragons in an alternate 1840s North America (set in the New England region, namely versions of Rhode Island and Massachusetts). The novel opens with the protagonist, Anequs, becoming the first person from her island to see a dragon in ages, prompting her to discover an egg that was left behind. After this egg hatches, Anequs also becomes the only one of her people in living memory chosen to be a dragon’s companion. Since much of her people’s knowledge about dragons and their bonds with humans has been lost over time, Anequs ends up deciding it is her duty to go to a dragon academy run by the colonizers on the mainland after her dragon accidentally burns her younger sister when frightened.

Life at the academy is a challenge for Anequs, between navigating a different culture with different social rules and learning some unfamiliar subjects, particularly the chemistry-based system that allows someone to shape a dragon’s breath into various elements. Worst of all, many people do not want Anequs at the academy, and her studies are made more difficult by several people—ranging from her fellow students to her teachers to powerful politicians—who feel threatened by the idea of Indigenous people having dragons, particularly now that there are a grand total of two of them. But Anequs is determined to succeed: if she cannot prove she’s capable of shaping her dragon’s breath and preventing her from being a danger to others, the cost will be her dragon’s life.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath has collected several awards and accolades since its 2023 publication—including winning the Andre Norton and Lodestar Awards and being nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel—and it’s easy to see why. I found it riveting from start to finish, and I loved the world, the oral stories sprinkled throughout, and the school setting. Although I prefer stories with more richly developed characters, felt conflicts were often resolved too quickly and easily, and thought major events toward the end were not given the weight they deserved, I found this to be an engaging, delightful book that stood out more than most of those I read.

I can’t comment on the next book in the series yet, but this novel is somewhat small in scale, focusing on a localized region containing a couple of islands and the area on the mainland relatively close to the school. The stakes are not the fate of the world, and although a lot of it feels low stakes given the heavy focus on classes and social gatherings, the stakes certainly aren’t low for Anequs and her dragon. While dragons are sacred to Anequs and her people, she discovers that the Anglish people who came across the ocean kill dragons they consider feral and have even put them to death because they don’t like their choice of companion. These dragons are wild animals that can be a danger to people, and although they form a bond with a human, they aren’t the type who use language or communicate clearly. The dragon and their human companion can only sense what the other is feeling in the moment, such as when Anequs picks up on the fear that makes her dragon loose the breath that hurts her sister early in the novel—and it’s vital for these creatures’ safety and longevity that they learn to refrain from actions making them seem too prone to violence.

In this version of the world, there never was a Roman Empire. The people who colonized North America followed Scandinavian culture and traditions, and though the names have been slightly altered, many of their stories and holidays are steeped in Norse mythology. In addition to containing alternate history, there are also speculative elements in the form of steampunk/Gaslamp fantasy technology like automated horses, chairs with crab-like legs for those unable to walk, and various inventions powered by the dragon’s breath that can be broken down and shaped into different elements.

Despite these speculative and historical changes, the Anglish people in this setting did carry over the hierarchical views and social rules associated with the Victorian era. Part of what I found compelling about this book was being immersed in this society while getting the first-person perspective of an outsider who didn’t grow up with these rules and often challenges them. Anequs doesn’t see any reason she can’t befriend a maid or consider courting a woman (or a man and a woman at the same time), and it doesn’t make sense to her that some things are “for ladies” and others are “for gentlemen.” But as much as I enjoyed her character, I sometimes wondered if maybe she seemed a little too wise and together, given she always seemed to have all the answers and not one drop of uncertainty. Although I can’t think of many qualities she has that would be considered flaws, I feel like she’s just imperfect enough to be realistic. There are times she speaks her mind when it may not be advisable, even if she does tend to be in the right and being outspoken doesn’t get her into as much trouble as one might expect. Given that, the main factor that convinced me was a moment when she realized she’d previously been wrong to dismiss her roommate’s offer of help as not being useful after she’d gained a better understanding of Anglish society.

After putting some thought into it, I ended up deciding that being wise and together fit her character. Although she’s only fifteen years old at the start of the novel, she’s been an adult in her culture for two years at that point. As the older daughter in a family with four children, she’s also been raised to understand how to run a household with the expectation that she’ll take her mother’s place one day, and she’s helped look after her two younger siblings. Her reactions to life among the Anglish showed she was raised in a culture that valued respecting others and allowing them to be who they were so long as they weren’t hurting anyone else. Starting from this point earlier in life seems like it would make it easier to be self-assured and secure in oneself at a younger age, and she wouldn’t have to unpack all the social baggage so many accumulate and end up contending with when they leave home for the first time.

With these qualities, Anequs is the person in the friend group who is always giving good advice, trying to help, and supporting everyone else. The other students and young people around her have more internal conflicts and struggles with figuring out who they want to be and how they can exist in their society. Liberty, an indentured maid with a talent for sewing whom Anequs befriends and crushes on, has had to hide that she is only attracted to other women. Theod, the other Indigenous student (whom Anequs also crushes on), only knows what the Anglish have told him of his heritage, having been raised among them after his parents were executed when he was a child, and is frustrated by Anequs’s refusal to behave as expected and try to blend in. Sander, who becomes Anequs’s friend after he helps her in one of their classes, is often treated poorly and underestimated due to his autism. Marta, Anequs’s roommate as the only other young woman attending the academy, has a lot of the aforementioned social baggage but seems to have a good heart underneath it all—if only she can learn to follow it instead of pursuing status and propriety, which she feels is even more necessary given she’s going into a male-dominated field and is therefore a bit of an oddity.

I enjoyed all these characters and their dynamics with Anequs, and I also appreciated the variety of adults at the academy. Its headmistress is the type who has often been the protagonist in a fantasy novel: she disguised herself as a boy to gain access to the male field of dragoneering when she was young, eventually becoming the first woman in the field. Though she has some clashes with Anequs due to her overall Anglishness and insistence on “proper” behavior—in large part because she realizes there are many people looking for excuses to make her stop doing unusual things like teaching people who aren’t young white men—she’s also advised by the softhearted matron of the house who tends to be sympathetic to the students. The professors range from one who actively tries to sabotage Anequs’s education to one who supports her by showing that she knows a lot more about natural philosophy than she thinks she does when starting his class. Most of the others are between those two: it’s common for them to do things like show surprise at Anequs’s knowledge or make uncomfortable comments related to her people and culture, but they don’t seem to be trying to make her studies any more difficult than they’re supposed to be.

As much as I enjoyed the dragons and the scholastic setting, I found the alternate world and the mythological stories covering subjects like how one of Anequs’s people became the first to bond with a dragon stood out more (and as previously mentioned, I love fantasy of manners). Yet in the end, what I found most memorable was Anequs herself: like many characters in this novel, she was shaped by her background and circumstances, and she showed what formidable strength can come from growing up among those who value community and acceptance. I look forward to reading more about her and seeing where her story goes next in To Ride a Rising Storm.

My Rating: 8/10

Where I got my reading copy: Finished copy from the publisher.

Read/Listen to a Sample from To Shape a Dragon’s Breath

Read Moniquill Blackgoose’s 2023 Women in SF&F Month Essay

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Ai Jiang! Her poetry and short stories include “We Smoke Pollution,” winner of the 2023 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and “Give Me English,” a Nebula and Locus Award finalist for Best Short Story. She is also the author of the Bram Stoker and Nebula Award–winning horror novella Linghun and the science fantasy novel An Empire in the Clouds (coming in September). Her next book, A River From the Sky, comes out tomorrow and will complete the science fantasy duology Natural Engines that starts with A Palace Near the Wind. I’m thrilled she’s here today to share about the types of stories that resonate with her in “A Different Kind of Comfort.”

About A River From the Sky:

From the Nebula and Bram Stoker Award®-winning author comes the lyrical and moving science-fantasy follow-up to A Palace Near the Wind, as Lufeng and her sister Sangshu fight to protect their culture and their world. For readers of Nghi Vo, Amal El-Mohtar and Kritika H. Rao.

Fleeing from the Palace and crashing into the waters below its steep walls, Lufeng and her siblings reach Gear, with its huge deadly water wheels, where their sister Sangshu is waiting for them. In the chaos of the enormous waves, within moments they’re snatched away and taken into rebel territory, where they learn more of the deadly experiments Zinc has wreaked upon the people.

Loyal to Copper now, Sangshu herself is a victim of Zinc’s experiments. Desperate to find her family, she races through Gear to Engine, ruthless Zinc’s industrial heartland, where she burns with a desire to fix her own mistakes and those of others and find a way to save her world.

This powerful, beautifully told novella explores the bonds of family, the pain of leaving all you have known behind, and the terrible price of our industrial future.

A Different Kind of Comfort
By Ai Jiang

Lately, I have been reflecting much on the various media I consume and what has lingered with me over time, and something I noticed is that the works that resonate with me most are ones exploring identity and the self.

During university, the book that brought me most comfort, along with the writer who became such an inspiration to me, is A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. At the time, I was grappling with all the mistakes I had made in life up to that point, as a result of the arrogance of idealism, and the regret that followed. Within me, a darkness grew, and it was not one I knew how to cast light upon, because to recognize it meant accepting failure. Growing up, I had always believed that failure was unacceptable rather than something necessary. And it was through Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel that I was able to overcome regret, to reconcile with a part of myself that I believed had been shameful.

When I had first entered the short story space, about two years after graduating from the University of Toronto, one of the first stories I’d read while trying to work on my own writing craft was Isabel J. Kim’s “Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self”. Till this day, it remains one of my favorite short stories of all time, as it interweaves an element of folklore with speculative fiction set in a world that feels one step removed from our own. As I read this story, I felt a hollow ache within me slowly being mended. Kim had put into words the very dividedness of straddling two cultures I’ve felt my entire life, of the conflict between external society and at-home life and cultural community, the teachings that sometimes contradict one another, and the questions of “What if?” What if I had not left my birth country? What kind of person would I have become? Would it have been better? Worse?

This brings me to the 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once that essentially encapsulates everything I have ever contemplated in my life, about myself, about my family and those around me. Evelyn and her multiverse reveal all the possibilities that we wish for and dream about as immigrants and members of the diaspora—these pockets of space hold not only our own hopes but also those of our parents’. It breaks down the confines and constrictions that society has placed on us and we have placed on ourselves. Evelyn’s experience helped me reflect on my own familial dynamics and struggles. Particularly my relationship with my mother.

Sometimes, I find myself at the dinner table, bowls and plates still littered across the surface not yet cleared, peering at the leftovers that remain in front of us, staring at what I have always felt was the comfort of home, and asking, ruefully, what my parents’ dreams were, and what they are now. And they always answer the former question with an incredulous chuckle, as if they were an impossibility. And then they answer the latter question, and it always involves their children, me and my sister, and sometimes I wish they would save those dreams for themselves—especially my mother, my grandmother, who I believe had their dreams taken from them before they could even think to have them.

So I suppose what fantasy and science fiction has become for me is a depiction of what could be and what could have been, what never was and never will be, and my hope is to continue writing about women who have suffered at the hands of the world and both those who are able to overcome, and those who wish that they had and couldn’t. I believe both types of stories, whether hopeful or bitter, may be able to provide different comforts—because I know they have for me.

Photography by Yizhi Zhang

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, winner of the Bram Stoker®, Nebula and Ignyte Awards, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, and BSFA Award finalist, and an immigrant from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, Uncanny, The Masters Review, among others. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of Linghun and I AM AI. The first book of her novella duology, A Palace Near the Wind, is out now, with A River From the Sky coming in Spring 2026. Find her on most social media platforms and for more information go to aijiang.ca.

It’s a new week of Women in SF&F Month, starting with a new guest post by Isabel J. Kim! Her short fiction has been selected for inclusion in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023, 2024, and 2025, and it has been on the Locus Recommended Reading List multiple times. Some of her more recent short stories are “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole,” a Nebula, Locus, and BSFA Award winner and Hugo Award finalist; “Wire Mother,” a 2026 Locus Award finalist; and “Freediver.” Her science fiction story “Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self” is the basis for her first novel, Sublimation, coming June 2. I’m thrilled she’s here today to discuss creating characters, particularly those of a different gender, in “Writing the Other.”

About Sublimation:

Doppelgängers, corporate intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, and the harsh permanence of the border: Sublimation is a thrilling and provocative debut for fans of Severance that asks what you’d sacrifice for a different life from award-winning author Isabel J. Kim.

The border cuts you in two.

When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home.

Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral.

She doesn’t know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life.

How far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make?

Writing the Other

Shortly before I left the law firm, I had a conversation with my coworkers that I still think about today. We were in a bar—we were lawyers, of course we were in a bar—after work, and one of my friends leaned over and asked me, How do you write men? Followed by the questions, How is writing men different than writing women? Was it hard to learn?

The underlying assumption girding the question was: To write a different gender was a really difficult thing to do, and there were material tactics and facts that a person needed to learn to write another gender.

Which, yes, I suppose there are, the same way that there are tactics and facts one needs to learn to write a wizard in a faraway kingdom, or a spaceship pilot in the 54th century, or a deep-sea researcher diving in the oceans of Europa. Gender isn’t markedly more difficult than any of that. And people with gender? They live on earth, and you can even ask them about their lived experiences.

All pithy comments aside, “writing other genders” is an interesting thing to discuss, especially since “men writing women badly” comes up as a topic fairly often, and occasionally the converse, “women writing men inaccurately” is discussed, and even more rarely, “writing nonbinary people or other genders in any capacity at all” gets discussed. (Given the makeup of your social group and social media presence, you may have seen different opinions in different percentages.) And it’s a fair point, that when you begin writing, characterizing people who are different from you can be daunting, and the first thing a person is likely to try is writing a different gender.

In that sense, “writing gender” is an interesting way to talk about “writing the other,” which is pretty much all writing, especially fantasy and science fiction. I think about writing other perspectives a lot, because my own background is fairly diverse—I’m a Korean-American woman, and I spent part of my childhood overseas in Korea. But English was my first language and I read mostly western novels, where it felt like every protagonist was a white man, and the assumption of the writer was that only other white men would read these stories, not a ten-year-old Korean-American girl going to international school. Very poor future-proofing on these authors’ parts.

In contrast, it felt that often when an Asian woman was being written, she was a hastily sketched 2D orientalist stereotype. And even when an author was attempting to create a fully realized Asian woman, there would often be a significant overemphasis on her “otherness.” This all gave me a strong sense that I was in love with a genre that would never love me back, or ever think of me as a human being with human thoughts and human desires. Again: who will think of the precocious ten-year-old Korean-American girl?

Jokes aside, my experience reading speculative fiction was a kind of forced empathy. To enjoy the genre I had to get really good at empathizing with others and foreign situations very quickly. Similarly, my experience with writing was an exercise in both learning to make my characters relatable and empathetic to an audience who I had to assume came from a different background than I did. I don’t mean to sound self-pitying—I think to a large extent learning to make their specific human experience legible to the greater human population is the experience every writer should go through.

I also believe things are a lot better now both globally and in the speculative fiction space. The diversity of representation available to weird little Asian girls today is far greater than it was when I was younger. Even in these trying times, I do think the majority of people writing thoughtful fiction care about depicting the world and the people in it accurately and non-stereotypically. But I also think it’s easy to assume that “writing the other correctly” is a harder thing to do than it actually is, and simultaneously, I think there are also a lot of common pitfalls that an early-career author can fall into.

So, here is my checklist of things I remind myself whenever I’m writing a different gender, and by gender, I of course, mean “anything out of my comfort zone.”

1. Everyone in the world, every single POV character, is just some guy, and from their point of view, they’re normal. They aren’t thinking about the things that make themselves different from you; to them, their characteristics are just background.
2. The amount a character is thinking about gender is in and of itself a character trait. Think about how often you think about yours. You aren’t going about your day thinking about your gender unless it’s a particular friction point.
3. Think about why a particular character is a particular gender: Are you trying to fulfill or subvert an archetype? Is this character a woman because you need a character that takes a more “passive” role in the story?
4. A character isn’t usually thinking about their dimorphic characteristics that much, unless it is immediately relevant, or they have a character reason to be thinking about these characteristics. How often do you think about the color of your eyes? Or about your height? These things are apparent to the others around a person, but despite being relevant to the person’s life experience, they aren’t consciously thinking about them until it is brought up.
5. Goals aren’t usually gendered or generalizable. People want specific things that are specific to their personality.
6. When goals are gendered or a manifestation of societal trends, then the friction between the character’s goal and the larger societal mandate is often interesting. For example, if a woman wants to be a mother, but she’s a twenty-five-year-old single woman working in investment banking, she has two conflicting societal mandates—”succeed in her career” and “have a family.”
7. How a character thinks about or interacts with others of different genders reveals more about the character than it does of the people they interact with. If a character’s POV talks a lot about how other characters look, well, that says something about the character, not about women, or men, or any gender as a whole.
8. There’s no one way someone of a given gender notices potential romantic partners; the spectrum of traits that a person notices is very wide.
9. Gendered socialization begins early, but the extent to which a person experiences gendered socialization as a positive or negative thing is an individual character difference—especially if the character isn’t cisgender.

And, to give an example of how I think about the ideas in this checklist when writing characters, I’m going to walk through the two main characters from my debut novel, Rose and Soyoung. The added twist here is that Rose and Soyoung are the same person, but one was raised in Korea, and the other was raised in America—so the gender norms that each character is working in are culturally distinct.

Neither Rose nor Soyoung thinks about their gender or ethnicity until it becomes relevant. Because Rose lives in America, she thinks about ethnicity more than Soyoung does, because she’s part of an ethnic minority in a multicultural society, and the narration from her perspective will occasionally mention her feelings on the subject. Because Soyoung lives in a more sexist society, she mentions gender a little more in her narration.

Both characters have relatively privileged lives, and because of temperament, don’t feel restricted by their gender. Therefore, they’re mostly going to consider it when they think they can use their gender and the stereotypes around it to their advantage. This is also the situation in which they’re thinking the most about their appearances, as well as when they’re trying to compare themselves to each other. The only other reason they think about their appearances is in the scenario where they’re attracted to someone and wonder how they might measure up in that someone’s mind.

With regards to their goals, Soyoung, having closer ties to her family and her culture, has absorbed more messaging around the path she “should” take in life, i.e., marriage and kids. And while she wants these things, she’s also primarily interested in something she thinks she shouldn’t want. Rose, on the other hand, doesn’t have as much baggage related to prescriptive life paths, and what she wants is unrelated to her gender.

And so on and so forth, as I work through how the characters relate to their genders.

The list isn’t exhaustive or prescriptive, and I write it mostly to encourage people to think through the process by which they attempt to create fully realized characters, and to examine their biases while doing so. At the end of the day, writing gender is a matter of making a number of choices that distill the general contours of human experience into the specific expression of one individual human, who exists within those general contours of human socialization and experience.

Or, to put it in sillier terms, you are not writing Every Woman Who Ever Existed. You are writing One Specific Woman. However, this One Specific Woman is going to be influenced by the existing norms of her society. Therefore, whether the One Specific Woman reads accurately as “A Woman” is going to at least partially depend on how she interfaces with what she knows are the stereotypical markers of Being A Woman or the Common Woman Experiences. But more importantly, whether she comes across as a fully realized person is going to depend on whether you characterized her as a person, more than any accuracy around her as a “A Woman.” And you can rephrase “Woman” with “Man,” “Person of Ethnicity Other Than Your Own” or “Spaceship Captain” as needed.

Or, to answer my coworker’s question from the beginning, I write other genders by situating a person within the context of their entire existence. If you want to bake a pie, you must first invent the universe.

Photography by Amanda Silberling

Isabel J. Kim lives near New York City in an apartment filled with books and swords. She is the author of numerous short stories and has won the Nebula, Locus, BSFA and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and reprinted in multiple best of the year anthologies. When she’s not writing, she’s practicing law or podcasting. Sublimation is her first novel.