Emily

Incredibly interesting book. I've talked to people about it several times before I finished.
I've known next to nothing about Houdini before reading this. He was a smart guy, and I appreciate his honesty and thorough research into whether or not spirit mediums are legit. He's also very sassy and funny at points.

Something that does bother me, though, is now often he makes comparisons to his own tricks, saying "I can do this trick without the help of spirits, so the fact that mediums can do it is not confirmation of spirits." While true, he also can't go into detail on his own tricks and how he does them. I understand why, obviously, but it often feels like you can't quite bridge the connection to totally understanding, since he denies you the chance to learn HOW to do it. So, unfortunate casualty. Sometimes he had examples of other magicians' tricks, who'd told him how they accomplished it (for the purpose of this book). I think the really damning part against mediums is toward the end, where he has a letter from the guy who basically makes most, if not all, of the trick tables and tools mediums use for their seances. Literally a magic shop supply guy. I had thought it weird as I was reading that so many of these people could figure out how to make trick cabinets and tables - and it came together at the end.

The older english was a bit tiring for me at times, but also interesting to see how often Houdini writes run-on sentences. I feel less bad about myself.

Not sure if this is the case in all editions or not, but the edition I read included a summary of the first three books before the book properly started. The tone of this book is much closer to the original Dragonsbane, so here's what I'd actually recommend:

If you like Dragonsbane and want to continue, read reviews for Dragonshadow. If you think that book likely isn't for you but still want to read more of Jenny and John, skip straight to Dragonstar. You'll get the summary of what happened in the previous books, which is enough to understand the story.

Full disclosure: I did enjoy the two middle books (most people seem to regret reading them) but they were hard to read at times. The content is very dark, which I knew ahead of time per a review - but even knowing that, I had trouble at points. I do think the middle books are good (I loved seeing more about how dragons think, especially compared to Morkaleb), but they are definitely not for most people and will leave you hurt. Dragonstar does not.

This book does talk about some of the darker things that happened in the previous two, but not quite as harshly, and there are more good feelings in general. This is still a book about demons, though, who continue to do what demons do. So if that whole concept is upsetting for you, then just read Dragonsbane and leave it at that.

No in-depth review since this was a kids' graphic novel, but would like to note: Dragons of the same breed unfortunatley are drawn too similar, and it's difficult to tell them apart. I kept having to flip back to the page where the five dragonets are introduced just to tell who the main characters were in any given scene. Otherwise, it was fun.

Really enjoyed this book. Was looking for something somewhat along the lines of Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane and this scratched that itch for me. “Dragon is terrorizing the kingdom, there's just one dude who's probably qualified to try fighting it, he super doesn't want to do it, buuuuut we'll get him to do it anyway.”

Love the personality of Gill as a disgraced/jaded hero, and I think the characters and interactions are the strong point of this book. I see people listing the lack of world-building as a negative, but for me, I don't care to be drowned by unimportant details. I know what a general medieval/fantasy town looks like, let's move along. I appreciate that his sloppy rescue of Solene leads to more problems later, and the treason/assassination side plots. On that note- genuinely not understanding the other reviews saying this book was only about slaying a dragon. Did we read the same book? The real story is not the dragon.

I did think the narration of the dragon's point of view was unnecessary, but it didn't detract enough for me to feel like it's a bad thing. Not that I don't care why the dragon's attacking, but it just didn't feel needed in most cases.

I read this via audio, and the narrator did some great voice-work that really made me love Gill. I laughed quite a few times at his disgruntled sarcasm.

Looking forward to reading the second book once it's available at my library. The end of the book leaves a lot to be dealt with in the sequels.

I'll leave a few comments since there aren't reviews any for this at the moment, though this is really a book for children (maybe age 8-10?) so I'm not quite the target demographic. When I was a kid, there were very few dragon books to choose from, and so seeing the options there are now-a-days is interesting for me. I think I would have loved this as a kid.

This is a pretty straight-forward good vs evil story. I enjoyed the plot and enough of the characters. It's a “Chosen One” type story where Benmoth the dragon is destined to save the lands from the forces of Darkness and he does. I would have appreciated if the story perspective was locked to Tanner and Benmoth, because jumping around to everyone left me feeling Tanner and his friends were unimportant, and that this was trying to be more of a movie than a novel.

I think the biggest flaw it has is titles; titles are very surface-level and often repetitive. “Dagon the Dark Dragon” is exhausting to read over and over, especially when it's often multiple times in the same paragraph, and coupled with “and his Dark Dragons,” “Dark Warriors”, “the Darkness,” and “The Scroll of Darkness.” I lost patience for all titles (including Elite Guardians) since they were simply over-used, as if the reader had forgotten the context of the current paragraph. So while the story itself was fine, reading it became a drag.

This book does have one of my favorite lines I've ever read:
"The sight of him sent her into shock. She let out a gasp, and a screech, and then she died."
10/10 line, didn't see it coming, shared it with my friends.

This is fun of you're a local. It does omit that some of them couldn't possibly be true - I looked up the supposed deaths at the capitol building since they would most likely be recorded somewhere in history, and found that there were no deaths at the capitol. (That article did point out that the building has a negative pressure issue, which can cause doors to open/shut and papers to move occasionally, which I thought was incredibly interesting.)

No mention of the horse ghosts at one of the movie theaters - I forget the details, I think that theater is gone now. But a lot of stories I hadn't heard, and an obligatory take on Bloody Mary.

This was my first Stephen King book. I asked some folks who'd reads his stuff for recommendations, but the ones they gave me were all 500+ pages (like The Stand), and I'm not a good enough reader for that. I get frustrated if I go so many pages and haven't finished yet, and I get distracted and forget to read at all sometimes. So I picked out this one because it's shorter, and it was on display at the store a few months ago.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I think I should like it more than I do - it has a lot of themes I enjoy. I loved the writing style - I really like that, when you know X thing is going to happen later, intermixing bits of what's going on afterward (the book exerpts of The Incident, etc) while you wait to get to the thing.

There were a number of little things that bothered me; The gym teacher says a really strange line at one point, insinuating that women go "feral" when they see another woman on her period?? The only thing I can think of was that, the girls' actions were brought on by Carrie's powers as an unconscious side effect, but this statement by the gym teacher is so bizaare. This is also the first author I've read who actually does the thing where they over-describe womens' breasts, so I guess I'm lucky in that regard - but it's extra strange in that they're teens.

The big problem for me, though, was that Carrie herself was probably too relatable for me. So her whole story is a bummer.

Anyway, I get that this is an older work, so I'm not going to judge certain things too harshly. But it's awkward - it's a story I feel like I should enjoy more, but overall, it kind of just made me sad.

Corny but fun. I haven't read the other books in the series, I bought this randomly because I searched for “mermaid” on audible and this was the only one that wasn't straight-up romance or for children, and it sounded goofy and fun (there IS a romance, but it's not the main plot). I felt like the characters unique to this book were fine, but the OOPS club characters themselves were kinda cringy and I couldn't get into them at all. I'm sure you appreciate them if you actually read the whole series (this is book 16), but for me they were more of a distraction from the main story and main characters.

Don't think nutrition has ever really been explained to me this way before. Has no fluff so it doesn't waste your time, and is super informative.

This is a bit old now, it came out in the early 2000s, but the bulk of it is still accurate. The one thing I noticed is he recommends eating fish a minimum of twice a week, but now we know more about the mercury content in fish. And any other bits you aren't sure are up to date are easy enough to Google and confirm.

Pretty okay. This was originally recommended to me during college, to help deal with my shyness. I never finished it but still had my copy so decided to re-read it.

There's a lot of solid advice in here about how to deal with people, most of which comes down to “be nice,” but then explains how to do that. It's easy to think you're a nice person, but it's another thing to actually be shown a way to do it. It's also easy to be an ass, so a reminder now and then of how not to be an ass is good. And there are lists at the end of each major section of the important take-aways from each chapter.

That said, it's really framed more toward business conversations (though can help for every day stuff as well), and some of the examples are outrageous. There's one where a guy compliments an old woman's wallpaper, so she gifts him her car. Whether or not this actually happened, this book could have really done better to remove a lot of the really ridiculous examples - especially since there are so many. Some of the historical facts seem odd as well, and he talks positively about robber barons. So... don't get too hung up on all these, this is an old book. The examples aren't the important part.

If you're shy and awkward at conversation, this can give you an idea of what to say as a “I'm totally a normal talking human being and not a robot” sort of response. I've also recommended this to people who very clearly didn't know how to get their point across without resulting to insults right away.

This book is really great except for a couple of big points. It talks about how our ability to focus is less a personal failing (ie “I'm not disciplined enough to focus”) and more of a systemic problem. The author talks about a basic problem that leads to difficulty focusing, such as looking at your phone too much, and then talks about there are hundreds or thousands of people working against you, trying to make you fail. Are you poorly disciplined for looking at your phone too much, or does it totally make sense that you do when apps are engineered from top to bottom to be distracting and addicting? Do those people have a vested interest in telling you it's your fault and not to look elsewhere? Absolutely.

I think one of my favorite things about it is how he talks about the basic mantras most self-help and health books do - you need to eat healthy, sleep the right amount, and exercise regularly - and then talks about how this is incredibly difficult and the system is stacked against us. It's hard to eat healthy when as a child, you've been conditioned to eat foods that are terrible for you, and as an adult, you may not have the time to eat well. It's hard to get the right amount of sleep when our work obligations are high and cause stress, which keeps you awake. It's hard to get the right amount of exercise when the world around us has been made into the space for cars and there isn't a natural reason we would walk. This is such a vastly fresh take because I've never read a book where these things are offered as solutions and then the author admits they're really hard, and often a point of privilege to meet properly.

This book explains why it's hard to focus and it's true goal is to convince you that we need societal changes to fix them. We need the government to get involved and ban food additives in the US that are banned in other countries. We need infrastructure changes so walking is safe again and pollution is cut down. We need to push for a four day work week. These need to become big issues.

There's a couple of things that bother me though. The ADHD section is by far the worst of the book. It feels like he let his bias get the hold of him here and he feels bitter that he very well could have been diagnosed with ADHD as a child and put on medication for it. He only talks about ADHD as a thing that makes it hard to focus for kids in schools - nevermind that a really common aspect of it is that you can hyper focus, which is to focus intensely on something you enjoy. Hyper focus can lead to not paying enough attention to the things you need to do, but it's still a form of focus that's completely ignored by this book on focus. It's really frustrating that he talks about this whole privileged private school where kids structure their lesson plans themselves and concludes that ADHD is basically not real because it doesn't show up in kids when they have the freedom to make their own choices. The school sounds great, don't get me wrong, but they literally are all focusing on things they enjoy. No one would have the chance to be diagnosed in the first place because you're just hiding the symptoms. (TW: He also brings up a case where a kid was misdiagnosed with ADHD when the problem was that he was sexually abused, which is gross negligence to add to this discussion.)
He ignores that adults can be diagnosed with ADHD late in life, and the fact that they can throws a lot of what his assumptions are out the window. He wants to assume ADHD is a symptom that's almost always misdiagnosed, and that's simply not true. And while he doesn't directly say that, that is exactly what he's implying.

In the final chapter, he admits that this isn't a self help book and that he hasn't entirely solved the issue. Which... Look at your subtitle? It's different from a lot of self help books (ie: better) in that it's more of a journalistic research of the subject, but he gives a lot of general information on how we can get back to focusing. Turn off notifications on your phone, do the eat/sleep/exercise thing, spend less time on screens in general, etc. It just struck me as really disingenuous to say “this isn't a self help book” at the very end when it's absolutely set up to look like one. Maybe he said it in the introduction also and I've just forgotten.

Overall the book is really great. The ADHD parts made me pause and question if I should really buy into what he'd said before that section, which I was more ready to accept what he'd said. But I feel the rest of the book was better researched and backed up with things I knew from outside the book, whereas the ADHD section is contradicted for the same reasons.

I don't remember why I thought I wanted to read this one. I remember seeing it around for a while and kept thinking “that one's on my to-read list.” And when I finally checked it out, I found it wasn't. Strange, I was sure I put it there. Going into the introduction chapter with an open mind, since I had been looking forward to this, I ended up with that same thought: “why exactly did I want to read this?” I could not remember why I thought I'd needed this book, and the author did nothing to convince me of that idea as I sat through and repeatedly brought my hand to my forehead.

You aren't convincing if your best arguments involve redefining 100+ year old metaphors to fit your conclusion. You aren't convincing if your “samples” include fetisizing impostor's syndrome, which causes real problems for the people who have it. You aren't convincing if your arguments stand on shaky legs to begin with, and then you pull a bait-and-switch with your sample: “A full grown man debated a small child and won! Even though the audience agreed with the child!” Wow, no shit? “Just kidding! The child was actually a robot!” What? That opens up SO many other factors that COULD be going on here. But you were so ready to fit it to your conclusion, you didn't rethink that.

If you've ever in your life had a thought and then reconsidered it, this book is useless. I don't remember anything about how to actually teach yourself to enjoy being wrong, which is probably what got me to think I wanted to read it; it was mostly just him talking about people who do feel that way and what their attitude about it is. That doesn't automatically make it my attitude.

Did not finish.

I read the more recent (revised 2020) edition, with the pink cover. The author went out of their way to fix problems readers had, and talks about this in the afterward. While I still had some problems, I'm willing to accept this is an older work, and don't want to give the impression I think they should keep revising this forever.

This is ultimately a story about acceptance. Most characters are really just looking to be themselves, and trying to find a way to encourage everyone to accept them for who they really are. There's a variety of trans characters, and a lot of time spent on hearing everyone's pronouns and stories. Everyone is named after a plant/flower - even the dragon, who it took me way too long to realize was a pun around snapdragons.

It wasn't bad. The writing felt pretty amateurish and characters really lacked a distinct voice - which is weird to say, considering they all were unique. Too much of the dialogue, if you removed the context, could have been said by any character in the cast - including the dragon.

I typically seek out books about dragons, and this one sounded like it had a fun premise and was inclusive. It was written sort of like a folk tale, but I honestly don't feel that fits just from how much specific dialogue there was. It was light on action and had lots of conversations on lgbt acceptance. I understand including those are important, but there wasn't a lot of meat to the rest of the story - it feels like it had a message and it only cared about that. Having an obvious message isn't a bad thing, but don't neglect the rest of the fluff along the way.

I felt the acearo person was handled strangely and was underwhelming. His main purpose in the plot, despite being the main POV, was “I've met the dragon before, maybe he can help us find the baker's wife.” One of the final conversations really rubbed me wrong: He confronts a woman who had been flirting with him a bit too aggressively and asks her to stop, saying he just isn't interested (but is okay being friends). She then says she's still going to give him pet names, and blows him a kiss. It really... feels like she's going almost exactly back to what she was doing before, but now he's okay with it? I think this might have just been a bad way to show she's respecting his boundaries. The woman also explains she'd flirted with him specifically because others were pointing spears at the party, so she was trying to be friendly - but... it was blatant sexual harassment? And considering everyone was threatening them, that actually makes the situation even worse? Just weird all around.

Overall it was pretty fun and cute. I think my main gripe with the story was... it's a fantasy. It can be anything. You could write a world that's already accepting and inclusive, and instead have a fun romp. It's a bummer to me that the author created a fantasy world that's still working on acceptance.

Not so bad I didn't finish it. But it felt like it was trying so hard to be anti-men without having the proper meat to justify it, and I just didn't like the main characters enough to feel like it was a good cause. There was only two decent men in the whole story, and one was promptly swapped out for his daughter. The other was barely in the story as well.

Nella is very self-important and thinks a bit too highly of herself. She's okay with risking the lives of women by preserving her ledger filled with their names and never sees it that way, despite everything that happens, and Eliza directly calling this out.

Caroline seems to only have ever interacted with her husband, James, as far as men go. (It's possible she doesn't interact with women much either, tbh.) At one point she considers going out to walk the streets of London but the thought of passing men wearing suits reminds her of James, who she's distancing herself from at that moment. That makes no sense to me. A lot of Caroline's motivations don't make sense, and some of her conclusions also seem a little too convenient. It took me out of the story several times.

Eliza was the best character, but probably should have been cut. The whole bit of her being motivated by believing her first period is a vengeful ghost haunting her, and she went through three adult women failing to explain what a period is to her, until the very end... What a frustrating plotline. Honestly I don't have a lot of patience for “my first period” plotlines because they're usually handled poorly. But I usually see male writers doing it, so was surprised to see it here.

Other than the characters, I don't like reading long passages of characters discussing how to Google what they're looking for. PLEASE just summarize sections like this. Also please avoid flashbacks when you're using the character chapter structure, where a character is the lead voice for the chapter and it alternates. I'm already jumping around mentally, I don't want flashbacks.

Honestly I think what I was hoping for was more schmoozing on the part of Nella. A bit more of picking up newspapers to see the news of a man dying of a “heart attack” or “sudden illness,” or hearing gossip on the streets, etc. Maybe sometimes she has to talk to men and put on a face to hide her contempt for them. But Nella is completely isolated; she's a secretive apothecary who really doesn't talk to people outside of the brief visits from women requesting poisons. She decided all men are awful based on her experiences with one (1), which WAS a pretty bad experience, but like. Does that justify exclusively poisoning men and refusing to EVER poison a woman, no matter how bad that woman is? I really don't get your character.

A lot of the points in this book I'm familiar with already, but I'm not the most articulate when talking, so part of me picking this up was hoping that I'd get more things to think over and help me feel more prepared for those conversations.

I really appreciate the angle this book takes - systemic racism - rather than saying you should focus on each individual person with racist views. This is not only a more productive (and healthier) way to look at the big picture, but I think that helps make this book reasonable for giving to people I know that don't quite know/get these issues, but are receptive to hearing. I also appreciate that the author used an example of privilege that she herself had; I think that helps break down the assumptions that come with that word. It becomes less threatening when we understand everyone has some sort of privilege.

This book cites its sources if you need more info. It's a quick read (especially since I used it as a break from a ~120 year old book I'm reading atm), informative, and respectful to the reader while also trying to help you see from another perspective.

I haven't read a lot of horror yet, so I guess my opinion here is only worth so much, but this was fantastic. Loved the writing style, loved the twists, satisfying ending, and was new perspectives (for me). I'm really happy I liked it so much, I got this as a gift last year and had been waiting until October to read it, and it was worth the wait. I would have finished the book sooner, but the end of Lewis' section I did NOT see coming and I put the book down for a couple weeks after that, lol. Some characters are morally better or worse than others, obviously, but I liked all of them and they were well fleshed-out.

Dogs (and elk) get seriously messed up in this book, and it's not avoidable. I know some people get more antsy about dogs getting hurt than people getting hurt in fiction, so if that's a problem for you, avoid this one. Otherwise, this was a lot of fun.

Minor side-note: I have problems with my shoulders that make holding a lot of books for long periods difficult, and have been avoiding certain kinds of books because of this. The hardback copy of this was very easy to hold, though. Perfect size for my little hands too.

My favorite book. I read this in high school and couldn't remember much since, except the very beginning of the story: After Gareth talks about how heroic dragonsbanes are - riding into battle on horseback with a sword, charging down the dragon - John (an actual dragonsbane, and the only currently living one) explains this is the stupidest way to fight a dragon and will surely get you killed before you even reach it. The ballads had embellished dragon-slaying, and hearing the truth destroys Gareth's mental image of what a hero is. This premise is what brought me back to the book years later.

Jenny and John are both great, solid characters. Jenny is a solid woman protag who's unsatisfied with how pitiful her mageborne powers have always been, even after devoting her life to the study of magic. John is her nerdy, hilariously charming husband - thane of the Winterlands not because he wants to be, because he'd much rather be scouring old ruins searching for philosophy and history books. But he has to be thane, and people depend on him to be, and so he is. A genuine hero, not looking for the flashiest solution, but for the one that will actually work.

The personification of dragons is an interesting take, since it's done in a way that genuinely makes you feel that they think differently than us. Absolutely love the dragon, and the magic system. The journey and the other problems (beyond just a dragon attacking the kingdom) are all just as, if not more, enthralling.

This book is for adults, not so much for a “mature” content rating but more for being relatable. Jenny and John are around 40 and have kids. I don't think I really appreciated Jenny's problems the way I do now when I was in high school.

A lot of people don't like the sequels, but this book has a satisfying ending so you're perfectly fine just reading this one. (If you DO consider the sequels, read some reviews before deciding it's right for you. They are much different in tone.)

Great book. Very funny, weird, and ridiculous. The story goes from all sorts of perspectives to the point where you almost feel like there really isn't a main character - there are just so many people to swap through and a lot of them are important. Chickens alone are a funny animal; Stealing a million chickens is even funnier. Very much a sort of “we gotta get the ol' team back together” sort of story, except you need hundreds of people to move this volume of chickens.

This story is well researched - evident by the list of acknowledgements in the back, but also just throughout the story itself. It creates such a well fleshed-out world, since you get perspectives from not just the investigators, but the farmers and others to happen along the edges of the story as well. Everyone has their own objective, the whole plan becomes more and more disorganized. The writer's style is unique, which sometimes I really enjoyed and others I thought was odd. Either way, it kept the story fresh throughout.

Chapters are incredibly short, which makes this a pretty fast read. I read the paperback version, which as it turns out, is shorter than the book actually appears to be: with short chapters, there were often pages who had tons of white space, as the new chapter would start on the next page. It was refreshing mentally to get through chapters so fast, but I couldn't help thinking about how they'd have saved paper by just starting the new chapter at the end of the last one. Minor complaint, but I kept thinking about it.

My biggest problem with this book was the beginning. I read this because I found it at the bookstore (apparently I'll buy almost anything with a bird on the cover, I had three in my hands that day and had to choose one), and the synopsis (which, on the book itself, is shorter than the goodreads synopsis) made me believe it was a funny heist story. It is, but the beginning of the book is so depressing. I was really looking forward to just... something funny after the past year, and the intro was just the opposite of that. I went from incredibly excited to start this book (I told several friends about it) to putting it down for some time. The biggest reason I picked it up again was, I'd happened to leave off at the introduction for the second character, so I was hoping I'd like her more. I did.

After things get going, though, the humor does pick up and the story you're expecting shines through. Many of the characters have rough and unhappy pasts, but after the way the first character's introduction goes, you're ready for anything. The first character becomes more enjoyable. Overall this was very fun, and I'd recommend it - but with a small notice about how the book starts.

This was exactly to my tastes. It's described on the back of the book as Moby Dick, but instead of whalers, it's about drachenjagers (dragon hunters) traversing the Cloudmere in their magic crystal-levitated ships. Much like whaling, dragon hunting is dangerous business. And much like Moby Dick, here a jager captain's crew was struck with tragedy when a monstrous dragon of myth known as Gargantuan, aka the Black Leviathan, attacks his crew and kills nearly everyone on board. The bulk of the story takes place five years later and follows Lian, a young man studying crystal carving, who suddenly finds himself in a bind and has to flee his home.

This book is exactly what I love about dragons. Powerful, mysterious monsters that aren't fully understood. They're dangerous, they need to be taken seriously, they're not talking ridable pets. (Unless you have the mettle and sheer force of will to tame one. But they're still beasts.) They're not friends, they're not magically bound to humans and telepathic with them. They can be tamed, but it's more akin to taming a tiger.

The pacing is good, there's very little downtime and time wasting fluff. Lots of fun dragon fights and other exciting things happen. Entertaining the whole way through. I haven't read Moby Dick so I don't actually know just how close it is in terms of story beats to that, but as its own story, it's very good. A perfect book for me.

This series so far is a lot better and more fun than The Silver Eyes (which drove me mad). There are occasional leaps of logic, but these are just kind of spooky Goosebumps-y short stories for teens, so it's mostly forgivable.

I don't think you really need to know anything about the Five Nights series to get into these, but... I'd say it's a better experience if you do. Everything is a reference to it.

I kept putting this book down and coming back to it, hopeful I'd finish, but I'm calling it quits. My complaints here I think are more about the author, or maybe even just his writing style. I had been excited to read this one originally, but if I'm really fair and honest, I think the “dragons are big, talking, ridable pets” genre just isn't for me. So I don't want to be too unfair, since it's probably a fine story for someone who likes that genre - there are parts I really enjoyed. But ultimately, I don't like the main character, and I can't say I like this book.

Was hoping I'd eventually come around to this one, since this is my second attempt at this author, and I was immediately encouraged by the premise of this book being very different from another book of his, Dragon Champion. That one starts with male dragon hatchlings fighting to the death until there is only one survivor (the protag). It's totally normal for male siblings to fight to the death upon hatching, while their sisters cheer them on and pick sides. Later, after the dust has settled, the adult dragons start talking about how great “dragon marriage” is and become weirdly humanly-normal after that in terms of conversation, even discussing their wedding day and having family there and how funny your dad was when he did that thing at our wedding, oh ho ho. The female hatchlings sing about how one day they'll be grown and married to a male dragon, and it's literally the only thing they care about. The surviving male hatchling only cares about how strong he is, and this is reinforced by the parents. That's the point where I returned Dragon Champion to the library, so I don't know if it gets better. I'll just say that it was weirdly sexist and an incredibly boring take on dragons: “They're basically human, except they kill each other as infants!” ...Okay?

Moving onto this book. Novice Dragoneer starts with a female protagonist and attempts a coming-of-age story, which I'd hoped meant good things for the author's writing - maybe this one won't come off so weird since he's attempting it from a girl's perspective. Unfortunately, it had its own problems. Protag Ileth is accepted into the dragoneering academy, which is effectively a military fort that trains people to be dragon riders. Not everyone who is accepted ends up becoming riders, and some are just regulated off to grunt work for the rest of their employment at the fort; everyone starts at grunt work and has to be promoted in order to get closer to dragons, effectively, so the first half of the book has very little dragon “screen time”.

Ileth is a fish out of water in almost every scenario: she has a stutter, which is annoying to read but you have to accept it early on (I'm really on the fence about complaining about this, because I don't mind necessarily that she has a physical defect/disability/etc, but my reading comprehension is in the pits. The stutter makes it extra hard for me to read and I get stuck on her lines!); she's a runaway from an abusive home in the far north, so she doesn't quite fit in with most of her peers, most of whom are more local and/or come from rich families; she was originally encouraged to enlist in her childhood by a woman rider who is long since dead by the time she makes it there, so her one ally isn't there. So she has to really fight to earn her place - which isn't necessarily a problem, but it is a bit taxing when it's for everything. Everything she does, every scenario she's in, she has to demonstrate that she belongs there. Which... okay, fine. I guess. Tiring, but I guess. This should be encouraging because you want to root for the protagonist and their struggles, but there are points where I'm just frustrated at all the characters instead. The same girl who keeps getting sent back to the Master of Novices, over and over, is the only one who has anything interesting happen to her, ever. No one else does? Really? There's no rumors about anyone else, ever, at the dragon school? Whatever I guess. The thing that really exemplifies this is when she's scheduled to do her "first" dragon flying session, and there's a mixup and she's instead sent on a multi-day mail delivery to multiple territories - a diplomacy thing that could have ended poorly if she said the wrong thing at any time. Of course this happens to the one girl who always gets into trouble.

The BIG problems I have is actually with three main points: her rivalry with one of her superiors, the trouble she gets into at a party afterwards, and a specific promotion. And these boil down to the weird sexism I keep smelling with this author.

1) She has beef with her superior at one of her work stations, a man named Gorgatern or something. I'm fine with the whole beef, but I'm not fine with how it was resolved. She ends up in a duel with the man, which could potentially be fatal - IIRC they're not supposed to be fatal, but that's the risk you run with duels, and this man definitely will take advantage of that to ensure he'll kill her - he's an asshole. Cool, all good, high stakes, interesting storyline. She's a 15 year old girl and he's a 40+ man who's worked hard labor most of his life, so she doesn't stand a chance. But SHE challenged HIM so she must have some plan, right? Yeah, of course! Her strategy is... to strip naked. She never explains, to other characters or to the reader, at all how this is supposed to help her. (Also, it DOESN'T help her. Whatever she thought it was going to do, it didn't.) She's ashamed she even did it and avoids talking about it to other characters. So... why... did she do it? If there was even a moment where she has some internal dialog where she just thinks "maybe it'll distract him and I can get an upper hand," and she regrets it later, okay, fine. But there's none of that. We're just expected to understand her reasoning. And I don't. Me in this scenario, as a 15 year old, would have never had the thought to strip down to no protection in a duel and think that would help. I would have never challenged this man in the first place; the thought would never have crossed my mind, which is why I cannot fathom why it crossed hers, and the lack of reflection is baffling.

2) She wins the duel (he's disqualified for trying to kill her iirc) and the man is cast out of the academy. Okay cool. There's a party afterwards because no one liked Gorgatern. During the party, the kids have snuck some alcohol. Ileth, drunk, attempts to romance a boy. They're immediately caught and the fraternizing is against the rules, so she's brought to her superior who is on the cusp of kicking her out of the academy. I don't remember exactly how the scene goes down, but she basically proclaims her love for this boy and is basically willing to get thrown out of the academy to be with him. I understand that this is the alcohol talking, but becoming a dragon rider is this girl's one and only dream in life, and has been for years while under her father's abusive roof. And the problem I have is that... AGAIN, there is NO reflection, no internal monologue, of her regretting even having this thought later on. No self-questioning.

3) Dragon dancers. She becomes a sort of erotic dancer for the dragons, because dragons are relaxed by the smell of human womens' sweat. Aaaaand... I'm done. I tried really hard not to hate on this concept, because I like taking old fantasy tropes and giving them a twist (for example, the video game Hoard has a better take on the "dragons kidnap damsels" idea, which is "to ransom them off because dragons are obsessed with gold and kings will pay well for their daughters back"). But this one is just kinda gross. I'm sorry. I tried really hard to read this as "maybe it's not in a sexual way" but almost every context where the cultural perception (on the part of the humans) of it is discussed, it's basically on the lines of promiscuity. The characters have to justify to each other that it's not actually promiscuous because "just the dragons see it." I appreciate the attempt, but the execution didn't pan out, imo.

My complaints with Ileth mostly boil down to, her actions don't make sense a lot of the time, and we're just expected to understand or accept them. She makes strange decisions that could destroy her dragon riding career and there is no self-reflection, no internal monologue, no attempted reasoning to her peers that explains why. Readers are just expected to understand. And I do not. I don't get it. Some of the stuff she does is WILD and goes against her character, and there's NO point where she reflects on them and even asks herself why she did them. (If it's teen hormones, say that! That's fine if she's confused too! But why aren't you saying anything?) Which is why I say it comes across as “weirdly sexist;” it reads as an expectation that this is how girls are. Of course a young woman would conclude this is the only way she can win a fight; of course a teen girl would try to throw her life away for the first boy she ever kissed; of course female dragons are weaker and have reasons to live other than males, and therefore only care about how one day they'll fall in love and be dragon-married.

I won't claim the author himself is sexist. I don't know him, maybe he's genuinely trying. Just that these two stories were off-putting. I got much further in this one than I did in the previous one, but my complaints there still shone through here. So I won't be trying his work again.

Nothing wrong with this per se, but the author is a bit young for a memoir (22), so there's not a lot of meat to this.

And I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of the title, which sounds like a surprised response to successful masking. The author wears his autism quite visibly by being a comedian whose humor talks about his experiences. Which is great, but we never hear the conversation of the title, and it sounds like he must get a lot in adulthood. Instead we hear about his childhood/teens where everyone could tell that he was autistic, and the bullying and outcast feelings that come with it. (Which is fine - include that in your memoir, by all means, but I was just expecting the title to come in somewhere I suppose.)