A fiery feminist fantasy tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.
In the first adult novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Ogress and The Orphans, Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.
 
Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and 
watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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When Women Were Dragons doesn’t read like a fantasy novel. In fact, it starts out and continues for a long while, very much like contemporary fiction. We follow the story of Alex, who was born in America in the 1950s, a time when girls and women were expected to shut up, do as men told them and let themselves be married off when they came of age. I’m not a fan of contemporary fiction; in fact, I couldn’t throw it far enough. So I was reading along, wincing at how awful Alex’s life was and then lo and behold, there were dragons. Yes, readers, ACTUAL DRAGONS. Not some magical realism construct, or some vague metaphorical attempt by the author to claim something fantastical when it’s not. No, there are real fire-breathing, gorgeous, flying dragons.

I feel that it’s important to make that clear early on, because while this is a novel about dragons, it’s also about so much more. In 1955, a mass dragoning took place in the United States, with thousands of women turning into dragons and disappearing. Despite the huge gap left in people’s lives by these sudden disappearances, as well as the deaths of spouses, family members and other people related to the dragons, and the monumental destruction left in their wake, the stance by the Government was to ignore that it had ever happened. It is something that nowadays could never happen. In the 1950s, however, it would have been possible, and the world Barnhill has created is thoroughly believable.

You only need to look at the history of women’s rights to see how women were treated in the 1950s and realise that the events of When Women Were Dragons are not just plausible, they are what would happen if this were reality. The thought of anyone turning into all-powerful mythological creatures is a terrifying thought, even more so for the men of 1955, who at that point were quite happily subjugating women. Have you ever tried to control a dragon the size of a house? Especially one that was angry with how she had been treated as a human woman by the man/men in her life? Yeah, they had no hope. Luckily for them, the dragons didn’t stick around, they left – and who can blame them really. If I had been treated poorly and suddenly sprouted wings, I’d lay waste to whoever had treated me that way, and then I’d be out of there.

The problem the men left behind had was that they knew nothing about dragoning, and they didn’t want to know. The more people knew about the ins and outs of dragoning, the more likely it would happen again. So they forbid the subject completely. Wiped it from public knowledge, made it a social taboo to discuss it, and researching it a crime. The “it” being dragons. When Women Were Dragons tells the story from the perspective of Alex, an eight-year-old who doesn’t understand all these things and only knows one thing: you don’t talk about dragons. Her story begins as a young child, four years before the mass dragoning and all the way up to her late adulthood.

Alex’s story runs the gauntlet of emotions; you will scream, you will rage, and you will cry. Despite When Women Were Dragons being a work of fiction, there is the unspoken knowledge that the things Alex does have happened to real women. Her story is someone’s actual story. In When Women Were Dragons Alex is helped by another woman who, in turn, was helped by another, allowing her to pursue her dream of further education. But I couldn’t, and still cannot, let go of the hollow feeling that settled inside me when I think of how many women were prevented from doing things by their male relatives. How many women were held back from education and could have been the next Marie Curie, for example? So much talent is wasted because of misogyny, and even more so if they were women of colour.

While there is so much darkness in When Women Were Dragons, there is also so much light and joy. There is a beautiful sapphic romance, and watching it unfold felt like I had been given a gift. There is also trans and non-binary representation, with some of the dragons that changed becoming their true selves when the mass dragoning took place. I thought that this was a beautiful way of representing the transgender and non-binary community.

Barnhill introduces her novel with a note about what prompted her to write When Women Were Dragons. She tells us about how she was in a car with her teenage daughter, listening to Christine Blasey Ford testifying to the United States Senate. How, at the same age as her daughter, she remembers seeing another woman, Anita Hill, take the same stand. As a non-American, I had to look up Anita Hill, and just the knowledge that two women decades apart had to do the same thing makes me feel so many emotions. I can only imagine how it must feel to be a woman in the US and bear witness to both events, knowing nothing has changed. Barnhill’s introduction is beautifully written, and just as When Women Were Dragons was released, the news about abortion laws was leaked. This may be a work of fiction, an alternative world where dragons exist in the flesh, but in truth, those dragons exist in all of us. The world of When Women Were Dragons exists, and women are fighting constantly to be seen and heard.

Unfortunately, we can’t turn into physical dragons and use our physical size and fire-breathing powers to make people take notice as the dragons do in When Women Were Dragons. It would be so much easier if we could. When Women Were Dragons doesn’t offer us an idea that isn’t possible; it reminds us that every single one of us can be a dragon, and as Barnhill points out in her introduction, our actions may not always work, but they do matter.

When Women Were Dragons is a magnificent novel, and one that I originally gave a full five stars to until I realised it has one flaw, which can be quite a big one depending on how cynical you want to be. I think that this may be an error on the author’s part rather than subliminal messaging. All the dragons that return are good people. Barnhill talks about what they do to help the humans they left behind, how they make amends and all their contributions to society (some of them are very entertaining). It didn’t benefit the dragons to appear dangerous, and they must have been aware that, despite their considerable advantages, they needed the approval of the patriarchy to stay. That being said, it seems highly unlikely that every single dragon behaved perfectly, none of them had an altercation or came back with a more destructive idea in mind. The dragons did do bad things when the mass dragoning happened; they caused a lot of destruction, and they ate or wounded people; however, it is heavily implied that these actions were extremely justified.

One of the topics interrogated in When Women Were Dragons is the purity of women, that they must remain good and be well-behaved. Alex attends a catholic school, and her interest in academics is constantly coming to the attention of the headteacher, who believes that women do not and should not follow that path. There is also Alex’s aunt Marla, who works as a mechanic, wears trousers and does not conform to society’s ideas about women. On the one hand, When Women Were Dragons is telling us that these notions of women being good and conforming are wrong, and then at the same time it seems that only good women become dragons, or at least only the good dragons return home. Perhaps it is just a case of something just wasn’t included, maybe it got cut out during a draft, or I’m thinking a little too much about this. It just occurred to me that, in a way, When Women Were Dragons is subverting itself by only having (or telling stories about) good, helpful dragons. It smacks a little too much of the feminist concept of sisterhood, of how all women think and act the same, for my liking.

Between each chapter, there are segments of dragon research collected by the foremost researcher of the subject. These range from articles, letters, sections from books and transcripts from court proceedings where the scientist appeals to the Government to allow scientists to research dragons and dragonings. Some of these segments were a bit scattered at times, especially at the start of the novel. As the story progressed, they began to make more sense, and they added to the overall story of When Women Were Dragons, adding context and providing a much wider scope alongside the much smaller world of Alex’s life. By alternating between this outside and inside perspective, Barnhill has created a brilliant novel that couldn’t be more significant right now.

Thank you for reading my book review for When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. If there’s one book you read this year, then this is it. Just make sure you have a box of tissues handy.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my reviews if you’re looking for some more book recommendations 🙂 You can also now sign up for my newsletter to get an email each month with a list of my new reviews!

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