Drakon Paperback – December 12, 2016

"The Brothers Karamazov with dragons" is how I've been attempting to encapsulate this book, now that I've finished it and am trying to get everyone I know to read it as well. It's set in the close, complicated relationships of a faded noble family on the Russian border, tasked with defending the rails from aerial attacks by the dragons who (in one of the book's central mysteries) defected en masse to Turkey for reasons unknown. The book owes more than its vivid setting to late 19th century Russia; the extraordinary clarity with which the characters are drawn, the effortless integration of philosophical drama, and the wholehearted embrace of moral complexity are loving tributes to the literature as well. From the struggle and growth of each one of the three troubled Tarasov siblings to the culture and poetry of the exiled dragons, I can't recall the last time a book made me simultaneously care this much and think this hard.

I picked up this book after a friend recommended it. I love alt history, but a lot of books get too bogged down in describing the period that I'm bored by the characters. Drakon takes some time to establish the world (yay for focusing on an uncommon region and period!) and the characters, but the payoff was great and the story was really engaging. The dragons are different enough from the usual to be fresh, and thankfully, not everyone in the book is straight.

I love this book. I love all the little details of it, how someone takes his tea or cinches her waist, how dragons look in flight or feel warm beneath their scales. I love the dragons, and how they're allowed to not just be people, but to be peoples, emerging from a complex history and debating what it means for them and who they are. I love the question of what it is to be a people, and how it resonates in this book with the question of what is it to be a family.There's a family at the center of Drakon, and you can see how they love each other -- but they haven't been taught to trust each other, and so they fumble toward understanding. There's Liza, who has to learn what family honor and family duty truly are to her, and Petya, who wants to fix everything that's broken and make something new, and Kesha, who in his self-made exile is drawn to the strange sublimity of a hidden language. I love them, and I love the people around them, friends and lovers, enemies and allies, with the lines often blurred as they discover and decide what they mean to each other. This, too, is part of what it is to be a people.There are so many things in this book. Family drama. Mystery and intrigue. Battles in the sky. Poetry and philosophy. Dragons! Every time I read it, it's like being given a gift, and it's a gift I want to share.