Dragon Pearl

[psocoptera]

I read a 2019 book and it's January, what kind of witchcraft! Dragon Pearl is Yoon Ha Lee writing for Rick Riordan's mythologies-of-the-world project, where authors from underrepresented backgrounds kind of do the Percy Jackson thing with their own culture. I mean, not that plenty of people weren't doing that before Rick Riordan - I had to check whether Laurence Yep ever wrote a book called "Dragon Pearl" (he did not) - but that feels like a fine thing for Riordan to use his name to promote, and, like, Roshani Chokshi's doing some, Rebecca Roanhorse is going to do one, yay people getting book contracts. Anyways, Dragon Pearl's young protagonist is exactly Lee's type, a shape-shifting, charm-person-wielding fox spirit, and her adventure in spaaaaace is fast-paced and action-packed, and the stakes felt just right for middlegrade. Man, middlegrade is so good sometimes. Fingers crossed I can get Junie to read it - I finally made a serious play to get her to read So You Want To Be A Wizard and I think she didn't get into it and never finished it and I'm sad. But onwards!

Comments

[glynhogen]

A few chapters in, Kaia's enjoying it. She asked if it was an author I knew (maybe this is going to be a standard question now; the answer was yes for the previous book we read, too).

The fact that she told me Dragon of the Lost Sea was boring still hurts a couple years later. That was one of my formative books, but she is not me and that is fine.

My general impression of Riordan is that he's been doing a pretty good job throwing his weight around.