Of course this is not just a light-hearted fantasy novel – this book does an excellent job of addressing the realities of patriarchy in America’s history, and all the ways that sexism has held women back from personal success. I loved the scientific element here – it added so much to the realism of the book, even with such a fantastical concept as women turning into dragons. However, there is still a great deal of detail on dragoning – what the process looks and feels like, who does and doesn’t dragon, and their best understanding of the whys and hows of dragoning. Even by the end of the book there is much that is not understood, as in real life when science is trying to break down complex scientific processes. For most of the book, the government as well as general society suppressed any attempts to discuss or understand the dragoning process, and it was clear how that impacted scientists’ abilities to learn about dragoning. Part of what made the worldbuilding so phenomenal was the characters’ admissions of what they did and did not understand, even by the end. From the very start of the book, it’s clear that there are scientists in the world hoping to better understand the technicalities of woman-to-dragon metamorphosis. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the worldbuilding was just as fantastic as the concept. I definitely picked this book up because I was fascinated by the concept of women, especially women in 1950s America, turning into dragons. Alex soon finds herself the primary caregiver for her cousin/sister, and is forced to grapple with the power that women have, and the efforts by men all around her to ignore it. However, Alex’s family is torn apart by the event, like so many other families that she knows. Alex is told that the child, Beatrice, is her younger sister, had always been her younger sister, and there’s no sense in claiming otherwise. Speaking of dragons and women’s ability to dragon is taboo, on par with discussing other feminine processes like menstruation or puberty, and so Alex’s family pretends that her aunt had never existed in the first place. Alex is a young girl at that time whose life is turned upside down when her aunt dragons, leaving behind her infant daughter to be raised by Alex’s family. When Women Were Dragons is a fantasy novel set in the 1950s in America, when women all over the country suddenly turn into dragons, causing mass destruction before flying off to enjoy their freedom. When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E.My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones.
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