by Esme Symes-Smith
2.5 stars
I’m really conflicted about this one. I went into it excited to read an epic fantasy about a non-binary child who dreams of being a knight in a world that enforces a strict gender binary of girls using magic and boys training to fight, going up against an unknown evil and bigotry along the way. Instead, the story is taken over by the trauma it tries to bring to light.
I was honestly expecting to love this story. Queer characters, dragons, and magic. Yes, please! But I think the things I disliked about it kept me from enjoying the good aspects.
The amount of misgendering and deadnaming was frankly exhausting. In one conversation alone, Callie is deadnamed/misgendered 12 times. The story is told in first person and Callie’s actual pronouns are hardly used. Because of this, the reader is confronted with the wrong pronouns over and over again without a balance of their real pronouns. This is used as a shorthand to show who the villain is, but frankly it was just overdone. There is also a lot of implied physical and psychological abuse and manipulation. This is an important issue to bring up, but it came up so often I found it quite overwhelming.
The pacing was so slow for an adventure book and so much time is spent developing the animosity between characters despite it being very obvious from their first interaction. This made for a slow and repetitive read. So much time is unnecessarily spent on repeated trauma rather than developing the plot and the characters. It’s crucial to show the trauma and hardships characters face, but this one dwelled on it so much to the point it took over the story.
The world isn’t really developed and it’s just a vague medieval society with knights, royalty, and some magic thrown in. I was much more interested in the outside threat to Helston, but because so much time was spent on repetitive demands for respect, there was little progress in that plot line. This whole story felt like it was just setting up the second book.
I really wanted to see Callie do exciting things. Instead they are forced to spend most of their energy on affirming their own gender, rejecting their feminine magic, and constantly confronting transphobia.
I did like how they stood up for their friends and how their views of magic changed over the course of the book. I loved the themes of standing up to bigotry, fighting for your friends, the beauty of found family, and open communication. Callie’s dads were absolutely fantastic and compliment each other well.
I do think I’m a bit spoiled as I recently read Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic, an anthology of trans fantasy and magic which has a great balance of joy and affirmation while also acknowledging trauma. This one just focused so much on trauma and bigotry without fulfilling on the adventure aspect.
The adventure itself was so drawn out. I found the first half boring and repetitive. There wasn’t enough time to deliver on dealing with the dragons and witch outside Helston’s walls.
This all led to a lackluster ending. I really wanted more from this book. Between the length and the repeated trauma, I found it difficult to keep reading at times. It was equally boring and frustrating.
Though I think the second book will deal much more with the threat beyond Helston, which I am interested in, I don’t think I’ll be continuing this series. There is so much I’d love to learn more about (Neal’s history, whatever’s going on with the “witch”). But the drawn out length and excessive use of misgendering in this one did not make this an enjoyable read and I didn’t get the actual adventure I was hoping for. Disappointed, but hope to see a lot more trans and nonbinary characters in fantasy stories for young readers.