The Dragon of Ynys

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.