To Shape a Dragon's Breath

 To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose, 511 pages.

There have been no dragons on Masquapaug for generations, so it is a cause for celebration in the community when a dragon egg hatches and bonds a member of the tribe. But times have changed since her people worked with dragons; they have been colonized, and the Anglish have laws about how a dragon (and their companion) are to be trained. So Anequs goes off to the Anglish boarding school with all of it's rich Anglish pupils and quickly learns that their attitude towards dragons are very different than her people's. For example, they kill dragons that are deemed too dangerous or unmanageable. So if she wants to save her dragon and learn enough of managing her magic to help her people she has to endure the Anglish school, and the polarizing political effect of her enrollment.

This is an exceptional novel. The whole thing feels very fresh and original, even while treading old ground (dragons and magic boarding schools are staples for a reason). I was never entirely sure if this was meant to be high fantasy or alternate reality Earth, but ultimately it doesn't matter all that much one way or the other. Most cultures on Earth have their own versions of dragon in folklore, and Blackgoose does a phenomenal job building up the fictional folklore of her world to reflect the same variety. Even more impressive, the stories that many characters tell about their culture's own version of the first dragon story still feel like folklore, rather than history, which isn't a distinction many writers preserve when the stuff of folklore is unarguably real. I also found the way the lines between magic and science were blurred to be very interesting, but it makes total sense in a world where societies developed alongside dragons. This novel is definitely structured around a more indigenous storytelling method, which I also found really interesting. 

My only complaint is that this is very much a first book in a series, so there are a lot of things that feel very unresolved. Related to that the author (necessarily) spends a lot of time on world-building, so this book is sort of plot-light and lacking in a single central conflict. That being said, I suspect the series will really hit it's stride in the next book, and I'm very excited to read it when it is published.