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norspider's review
Why does she want to fuck her twin?
Why is the dragon molesting her!?
Making it so our main character can only be verbal with the creature that abuses her cannot go anywhere good, and I am NOT going along for the ride.
Why is the dragon molesting her!?
Making it so our main character can only be verbal with the creature that abuses her cannot go anywhere good, and I am NOT going along for the ride.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Ableism, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, and Sexual assault
Minor: Incest
jefffrane's review
5.0
I've been reading Cecilia Holland from some point in the early 70s and with the aid of several good library systems and my wallet I believe I've read almost all her fiction, including the YA books. In the early years I was drawn to her depiction of historical periods as completely unromanticized and often harsh. Her language was usually jolting. Even though I'd read enough to expect the short precise sentences and clipped dialog I always had an adjustment period when starting a new book.
Sometime in the 80s her style changed and became more fluid and warm and lost (in my mind) the stripped-down prose of the early novels, and focused on later periods in European history. She also began writing novels of life in early California and she created the Corban Loosestrife stories set in the Viking era and ranging across the globe from Ireland to Vinland through Russia to Constantinople. These are slim, solid adventures with the supernatural brushing the characters throughout.
As far as I can tell, this is Holland's first outright fantasy novel and it's unsurprising that she immediately upends the genre with her characters, plot and superb language. It reads like an original Grimm fairy tale, pulled through The Edda. Her characters have common human traits and emotions but there is never anything really "common" about them or what happens around them.
Holland is clearly comfortable allowing our expectations to take us down twisted secret passages and give us dark deeds. Seemingly random moments and scenes actually ground the reader in that world. To me the language harks back to her earliest work, albeit softer; still the language is always precise and there are no wasted modifiers.
Dragon Heart is a gem; like the Loosestrife novels it is a slim volume, a fresh change from massive multi-volume fantasy series. Like Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it's just the right length to tell the story and needs nothing more.
Sometime in the 80s her style changed and became more fluid and warm and lost (in my mind) the stripped-down prose of the early novels, and focused on later periods in European history. She also began writing novels of life in early California and she created the Corban Loosestrife stories set in the Viking era and ranging across the globe from Ireland to Vinland through Russia to Constantinople. These are slim, solid adventures with the supernatural brushing the characters throughout.
As far as I can tell, this is Holland's first outright fantasy novel and it's unsurprising that she immediately upends the genre with her characters, plot and superb language. It reads like an original Grimm fairy tale, pulled through The Edda. Her characters have common human traits and emotions but there is never anything really "common" about them or what happens around them.
Holland is clearly comfortable allowing our expectations to take us down twisted secret passages and give us dark deeds. Seemingly random moments and scenes actually ground the reader in that world. To me the language harks back to her earliest work, albeit softer; still the language is always precise and there are no wasted modifiers.
Dragon Heart is a gem; like the Loosestrife novels it is a slim volume, a fresh change from massive multi-volume fantasy series. Like Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it's just the right length to tell the story and needs nothing more.
jcath's review
fast-paced
3.0
So, I think there are multiple stories being told here. The story of Tirza and the dragon. The story of Tirza and her family. And the story of the Empire and Castle Ocean. I really enjoyed the beginning and the middle of the boom, but I felt the ending was very abrupt and I felt left hanging with the story of the Empire and the Castle.
I also don't really understand Tirzas motivation for her end of book actions. For a book that even goes in depth into the minds and characterizations of everyone else, which is a perk of this book, having her reasons remain a mystery for an action that is a seeming antithesis of her character up to that point was odd.
I can kind of see how her character was moving in that direction but something about it just didn't hit right.
One thing I really enjoyed was the subtle magic of the world.
I also don't really understand Tirzas motivation for her end of book actions. For a book that even goes in depth into the minds and characterizations of everyone else, which is a perk of this book, having her reasons remain a mystery for an action that is a seeming antithesis of her character up to that point was odd.
I can kind of see how her character was moving in that direction but something about it just didn't hit right.
One thing I really enjoyed was the subtle magic of the world.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault
emtees's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This book left me so confused. I don’t know how to feel about it.
My journey with this book went something like this: for the first 20 percent, I thought it was fine, enjoyable but nothing special. Then suddenly it turned into something totally different and I fell in love with the language, the world building, the themes, the atmosphere. I was fully expecting to give this a 5 star review. And then the ending just… happened and I’m left feeling like I missed something.
To start with, this book is nothing like the blurb would have you believe. Yes, the main character (well, at the start; this book really has an ensemble cast) is a mute teenage princess who forms a bond with a dragon. Tirza can understand human speech just fine, but any attempt to talk results in her making animalistic sounds that just confuse the people around her. Because of this, and her difficult relationship with her mother, the Queen of Castle Ocean, Tirza has been sent away to a monastery. But now her family is summoning her home because their land is some of the last in the known world that has resisted colonization by the Empire, and Tirza’s mother is being forced to marry the Emperor’s brother as part of a treaty. On the journey home, Tirza’s ship is wrecked in an attack by a dragon, and Tirza ends up stranded alone with the beast, who becomes the first creature who has ever been able to understand her speech. Tirza spends her days distracting him from eating her by telling him stories taken from her family’s long, bizarre, myth-shrouded history, discovering a gift she’d never knew she had for storytelling. But she can’t bring herself to abandon her family and remain with the dragon; Castle Ocean, on some bone-deep level, is where she belongs.
So far, so YA-hero’s-journey. But once Tirza makes her attempt to leave the dragon and finish her journey home, the story turns into something else entirely. It’s about family and colonialism and resistance and community. It’s got political maneuvering on multiple levels. It has strong horror elements. It’s barely about dragons.
There is so, so much I loved in the middle section of this book. The writing is beautiful. The relationships between Tirza and her family are perfectly rendered: complex, loving, loyal even in the absence of understanding. I adored the bond between Tirza and her four siblings, and the way that Tirza’s muteness was just a fact to them, not something that made them think of her as helpless or less than the rest of them. The magic system is the best kind of soft magic - you never really know what it can do, because it’s not the kind of magic that can be pinned down with rules, and even the characters relying on it don’t fully understand it or what it will ask of them. I gasped out loud when I realized the big twist to the magic, something that had been right in front of me the whole time but cleverly hidden in the story so that I didn’t see it until the author wanted me to. There is a deep sense of danger and dread underlying everything that happens. The atmosphere in this thing - the creeping sense of inevitability as tragedies and “accidents” pile up, the growing awareness that our heroes and heroines are pawns of forces beyond them. The way the natural world of Castle Ocean, with its cliffs and beaches and architecture that seems to be alive in some way, is another character in the story. The POV work is brilliant; the story shifts between multiple characters, not only Tirza, her family and some of their people, but also some of the Imperials who have come to try to seize Castle Ocean for their Emperor and his world of order, and it’s striking to watch the breakdown in those characters’ views as their belief in a world that makes sense crumbles in the face of Castle Ocean’s weirdness. You also become aware that there are characters who are hiding their knowledge from you, and again, that’s done in a way that feels natural, not manipulative.
But then you get to the ending and… I didn’t expect every loose thread to be tied up because that’s not the kind of book this is. A big theme is that these characters don’t really understand much about their home or their heritage, so of course there would be mysteries that remained when the story was done. But I expected some of the many hints at bigger forces at work to pay off. Instead, the story ended incredibly abruptly and without really resolving much except maybe one or two character arcs.Tirza deciding to essentially leave the whole plot behind and run off with the dragon made sense on a character level, and if she’d been the main character for the whole book, maybe that would have worked as an ending. But by then we’d been in so many other character’s heads that it seemed bizarre to just leave them behind. What happened to Jeon, left with the remnants of the Imperials and his own people having wandered off? What was going on with the castle expanding? What role did the dead have to play - was Castle Ocean just going to become the realm of the dead, with the living all dying off? Will Casea and Dawd return? What the heck was up with the boar?? Luka seemed to think it was significant that it came from the mountains, maybe related to his father’s death and him leaving his father’s body behind, but then that just went nowhere. . Plus, the events of the last chapter or two are written so quickly that they lose all impact. There was a skirmish between the Imperials and the people of the region that went so quickly I barely noticed it was happening until it was over.
The frustrating ending definitely brought this book down for me, but not so much that I don’t want to immediately read everything else Cecelia Holland has written.
My journey with this book went something like this: for the first 20 percent, I thought it was fine, enjoyable but nothing special. Then suddenly it turned into something totally different and I fell in love with the language, the world building, the themes, the atmosphere. I was fully expecting to give this a 5 star review. And then the ending just… happened and I’m left feeling like I missed something.
To start with, this book is nothing like the blurb would have you believe. Yes, the main character (well, at the start; this book really has an ensemble cast) is a mute teenage princess who forms a bond with a dragon. Tirza can understand human speech just fine, but any attempt to talk results in her making animalistic sounds that just confuse the people around her. Because of this, and her difficult relationship with her mother, the Queen of Castle Ocean, Tirza has been sent away to a monastery. But now her family is summoning her home because their land is some of the last in the known world that has resisted colonization by the Empire, and Tirza’s mother is being forced to marry the Emperor’s brother as part of a treaty. On the journey home, Tirza’s ship is wrecked in an attack by a dragon, and Tirza ends up stranded alone with the beast, who becomes the first creature who has ever been able to understand her speech. Tirza spends her days distracting him from eating her by telling him stories taken from her family’s long, bizarre, myth-shrouded history, discovering a gift she’d never knew she had for storytelling. But she can’t bring herself to abandon her family and remain with the dragon; Castle Ocean, on some bone-deep level, is where she belongs.
So far, so YA-hero’s-journey. But once Tirza makes her attempt to leave the dragon and finish her journey home, the story turns into something else entirely. It’s about family and colonialism and resistance and community. It’s got political maneuvering on multiple levels. It has strong horror elements. It’s barely about dragons.
There is so, so much I loved in the middle section of this book. The writing is beautiful. The relationships between Tirza and her family are perfectly rendered: complex, loving, loyal even in the absence of understanding. I adored the bond between Tirza and her four siblings, and the way that Tirza’s muteness was just a fact to them, not something that made them think of her as helpless or less than the rest of them. The magic system is the best kind of soft magic - you never really know what it can do, because it’s not the kind of magic that can be pinned down with rules, and even the characters relying on it don’t fully understand it or what it will ask of them. I gasped out loud when I realized the big twist to the magic, something that had been right in front of me the whole time but cleverly hidden in the story so that I didn’t see it until the author wanted me to. There is a deep sense of danger and dread underlying everything that happens. The atmosphere in this thing - the creeping sense of inevitability as tragedies and “accidents” pile up, the growing awareness that our heroes and heroines are pawns of forces beyond them. The way the natural world of Castle Ocean, with its cliffs and beaches and architecture that seems to be alive in some way, is another character in the story. The POV work is brilliant; the story shifts between multiple characters, not only Tirza, her family and some of their people, but also some of the Imperials who have come to try to seize Castle Ocean for their Emperor and his world of order, and it’s striking to watch the breakdown in those characters’ views as their belief in a world that makes sense crumbles in the face of Castle Ocean’s weirdness. You also become aware that there are characters who are hiding their knowledge from you, and again, that’s done in a way that feels natural, not manipulative.
But then you get to the ending and… I didn’t expect every loose thread to be tied up because that’s not the kind of book this is. A big theme is that these characters don’t really understand much about their home or their heritage, so of course there would be mysteries that remained when the story was done. But I expected some of the many hints at bigger forces at work to pay off. Instead, the story ended incredibly abruptly and without really resolving much except maybe one or two character arcs.
The frustrating ending definitely brought this book down for me, but not so much that I don’t want to immediately read everything else Cecelia Holland has written.
taroteacup's review
4.0
I don't think people realize that this story is based off a short story compilation book titled "The Dragon Book" where the main character, Tirza, took on a different name and had a different place in the world of that story. I personally enjoyed this book because it built upon the background of the main character more then the short story did and added a suspenseful arc of rising action that continued to climb till the very end. A good short read and continuation of a short story written back in 2010 by Cecelia Holland.
raygina's review
I tried for several days to get into this book, but I just couldn't. I may try it again sometime but I'm shelving it for now.
wordnerdy's review
3.0
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2015/09/2015-book-219.html
Well, this book is UNUSUAL, which made it an interesting read? It certainly didn't follow the usual fantasy tropes? But I'm not sure it worked--at least, not for me. It centers on a royal family dealing with an Emperor/colonial menace, trying to remain independent. Youngest daughter Tirza can't speak, jsut make noises, only it turns out she can talk to dragons. This book kind of gets grindingly depressing, the colonials are perpetually thinking rapey things about the locals, and the end made me think--what was the point of this? Like, I said, it was interesting, but not in a way that struck a chord with me. B.
Well, this book is UNUSUAL, which made it an interesting read? It certainly didn't follow the usual fantasy tropes? But I'm not sure it worked--at least, not for me. It centers on a royal family dealing with an Emperor/colonial menace, trying to remain independent. Youngest daughter Tirza can't speak, jsut make noises, only it turns out she can talk to dragons. This book kind of gets grindingly depressing, the colonials are perpetually thinking rapey things about the locals, and the end made me think--what was the point of this? Like, I said, it was interesting, but not in a way that struck a chord with me. B.
cupiscent's review
Giving up after four chapters - roughly a third of the way into the book - because as much as I enjoyed some elements (Marioza ftw) I am just not engaging with the style; for me, it simply lacks immediacy and vigour. Perhaps it's the POV: third, distant bordering on the impersonal, and spread around among a lot of candidates. Perhaps it's the dialogue-lite narrative. (I am always happiest when characters are crossing communication.) Perhaps it's that all the wonderful weird of the setting seems to be merely marginalia rather than fully explored.
Just not for me.
Just not for me.
francescaalexis's review
2.0
I feel bad giving this book such a low rating. I think it's a blue cheese of a book, something that will be someone's favorite but isn't to everyone's taste, and is especially not to everyone's taste if they take a big bite of it thinking it's something else.
After a strong start with the actual dragon, the focus shifts to a Fall of the House of Usher-type story, with a complicated and and dysfunctional family in a moody castle in a dreamy and indistinct setting. It is significantly less fun than watching a Dragon and a Princess get to know each other. Too many characters in too short a space ironically creates a section that seems to go on forever. Really disappointing.
After a strong start with the actual dragon, the focus shifts to a Fall of the House of Usher-type story, with a complicated and and dysfunctional family in a moody castle in a dreamy and indistinct setting. It is significantly less fun than watching a Dragon and a Princess get to know each other. Too many characters in too short a space ironically creates a section that seems to go on forever. Really disappointing.