When Women Were Dragons

I just want to start this post out by giving you my overall Fable rating of this book. 2.75/5 and I said, "Maybe I should rate it lower - but this book was not it." I felt that this statement alone was sufficient to give other readers an idea of how much time this book wasted. As a matter of fact, if this weren't a book club pick, I wouldn't have read past page 50. One of the other girls in my book club DNF'd it and told us straight away in the meeting.

To give you some more statistics on this book, the average rating on Fable is 3.79/5 (with over 10k reviews) and on Goodreads it averages 3.81/5 (with over 70k ratings and nearly 11k reviews). Honestly, I think these ratings are a bit generous, but that is the beauty of reading: there is something for everyone.

Now let's talk about why I rated it 2.75 and not any higher. First and foremost, the writing is not horrible; there are some pretty artistic lines and compelling imagery scattered throughout the book. My favorite line is at the end of chapter I and it reads "Perhaps this is how we learn silence - an absence of words, an absence of context, a hole in the universe where the truth should be" (Barnhill, 6). This line in particular is the older version of our main character, Alex, reflecting back on a time when she was younger. I think it is well written and demonstrates the message the author was trying to convey.

There are so many examples like this throughout the book, but there are just as many, if not more, of seemingly unnecessary literary devices. I wish I had more direct examples to give you, but at some point, I had to switch to the audiobook and play games just to make it to the end. From my understanding, the entire book is written when Alex is older, as she journals all her research on dragons. But I feel this book would have had a greater impact if it had followed Alex as she aged. The language feels too dense and suffocating for an 8-year-old, and I found myself consistently having to go back and read how old Alex was during specific periods of her life.

Note: Doing some side research just now, I realize that Kelly Barnhill specializes in writing children's action books, but I did not know that before what I am about to write.

This book feels like a 13-year-old attempting to sound sophisticated by using every literary device known to humanity in every paragraph. I understand that this book was supposed to read like a scientific journal, and honestly, the parts where Dr. Gantz's papers are presented do feel like a scientific journal. But everything else was not delivering. The characters, except for Marla and the librarian, fall SOOO flat. I really dislike Alex and feel very indifferent toward her cousin/sister/daughter, Beatrice. (If you read the book, you know what I am talking about.)

I also do not understand how this book is supposed to be feminist. For most of the book, Alex is hindered by men and never truly breaks out of that mindset. This is especially evident in her distaste for the dragons themselves and her aunt, even though Marla really did the most for her and her mom. I don't understand the mom either. I cannot tell if the author was attempting to illustrate that the mom died because she decided to stay in her horrible circumstances, rather than turn into a dragon.

Also, the dragons made very little sense to me. Like, what do you mean...

That is all I am going to say on that matter.

Overall, I was really excited to read this book because the premise was actually very unique. However, I feel it was mainly undelivered and left me wishing I had never picked up the book. The only reason I didn't rate it lower is that, in the end, Alex made the decision I thought she should have; it was well within her character. If she had made a different decision, this book would have easily been a 2/5 for me.

Now, let's talk about it. Please, if you disagree (or agree), we can talk about it in the comments or via email!