Kelly Barnhill

The book is gripping, challenging, emotionally satisfying and worth reading. But the reviewer who notes that the dragons who return are... baking bread, organizing book clubs, knitting... doing all the things that they did before. Life has not changed for them.

What does this mean? The good life is just like the old life, only without men? Internal change changes everything: before enlightenment cut wood and carry water, after enlightenment cut wood and carry water? The message is mysterious.

Although, bakery dragons and alternative schooling dragons -- that is just the sort of thing that would happen in Madison. There's not a whole lot of evocative sense of place writing in this book. The author is better at writing people than places, and that's okay; it's certainly better for a book to have plot and character than geography, if you have to choose. But the dragon culture is pure 1970s Madison, after the riots were over and the Vietnam War ended. I recognized the milieu and the dragon spirit.

But the dragons who flew off to the moons of Jupiter were awe-inspiring. I wish we heard more about them.… (mehr)

In general, there were good parts to the book, but it was repetetive, with some plot holes. The idea of this book is that women, throughout history, have had the ability to transform into dragons fueled by anger or other passions. There was a mass dragoning event in the 50's, when a large number of women transformed to dragons, left homes and families, leaving a certain amount of destruction.
So in general, a woman's empowerment story. I would probably give this one 3 or 3.5 stars; and I'd say that if you liked [Lessons in Chemistry] you might like this as some of the themes are similar.… (mehr)