Rise of the Shadow Dragons by Liz Flanagan

Cover: Angelo Rinaldi 

And now Book Two

When I read Dragon Daughter, a couple of years ago, I recognised Liz Flanagan as a very special children’s writer. Her novel was deservedly one of my ‘Books of Year 2018’, and I felt she showed qualities that put her in the very top rank of children’s authors.

As a consequence, though, picking up the next in the sequence she is calling Legends of the Sky, I felt a certain trepidation alongside my eager anticipation. After the excitement and energy of the story that starts it all off, sequels can sometimes fall sadly flat, either so like the first as to be tiresomely repetitive or so different as to seem disappointingly unrelated. Happily Liz Flanagan has not fallen into either trap, and this book is every page a worthy successor to the first. In fact it has only redoubled my opinion that she is a very special voice indeed in children’s fiction.

Child appeal

So what is it that makes this book so very special. In trying to explain I can only repeat what I said about the first one: these are books that I know my eleven year-old self would have just adored. I remember well enough  how I felt about books back then to be absolutely sure. But I am also sure because the eleven year-old that is still inside me loves them equally. They are books to feed the imagination. They are books to loose yourself in. They have main characters who you want to spend time with, who you want to get to know and who  become your friends, albeit vicariously. At least one of them is, in a sense, someone you would like to be. They live, too, in world where you want to be, where you want to imprint a baby dragon, where you want to fly an adult one, where you want to show how brave you are (even though you don’t feel it) and where you want to help save the people and the things you love. Even though you quail and suffer through some of the terrible, and even traumatic, events of the story, it is the sort of book where you know everything will turn out all right . If fact you read on, desperate to get to the end where everything will feel good, at the same time as you don’t want to get there, because then the shared experience of the story will be finished. In that sense, it is a classic sequel, where you are delighted to get back to a world you feel know well, and see what things have changed. You hope there will be many, but not too many, and Liz Flanagan gets it just right.

There are instances where I find myself thinking, even with some perfectly fine books, ‘I really hope this writer doesn’t try to extend this into a series,’ but this is decidedly not one of those cases. I desperately hope there is a series coming on here, and I am sure countless young readers will too. 

Me and my dragon

Rise of the Shadow Dragons, continues to exploit the central theme from the first book, that of children imprinting a young dragon on its hatching, and becoming inextricably linked with them for life, but here with a new generation of young protagonists. Of course, those who know Anne Mccaffrey’s brilliant sci-fi fantasy series from the 1980s, will know that this is not a new idea, and, indeed, many other authors have also exploited it since. However, Liz Flanagan manages to make the concept both totally fresh and completely her own, setting it in a skilfully imagined high fantasy world that she evokes with vivid conviction. In doing so she brings together three highly potent  triggers that unfailingly illicit potent emotional response in children, that of  a strong bond between a child and a particular animal, that of the mythical power of dragons and that of flying through the air, here on the back of a powerful magical creature. It is a winning combination. 

To this Liz Flanagan adds thrilling multi-layered storytelling, involving both personal trauma, violent conflict within the world and society she creates, and natural disaster in the form of a volcanic eruption and consequent tsunami. 

Escaping from, escaping to

Yes, reading Rise of the Shadow Dragons is escapism. But it is an escape that many children need, whether it is an escape from difficulty and unhappiness, or merely escape from the humdrum, the ordinary. Further, though, like so many of the finest fantasy writers, Liz Flanagan uses the context of an exciting, imaginative narrative to explore so much more too.  She understands some of the deepest needs of children: the bonds of  family and the need for special friends; the need to feel important even though they often perceive themselves as inadequate; the need to save the world.  In fact, the actions that the young protagonists in her book take to save their world are in many ways ‘unrealistic’. But that is the whole point. Some stories elucidate the here and now, but others, like this, provide a wonderful place to go that is not here or now, but rather how things could be.  Through such books children can taste, as it were test out, the world as they wish it were. Such reimagining of ‘reality’ can be a wonderful thing and Liz Flanagan’s dragon stories are books of exactly this wonderful kind. In this sense they are the successors of Enid Blyton (although far better written), of Malcolm Saville, of JK Rowling, and their ilk. In envisaging themselves as having the ideal friends, as being more special than they currently feel, as saving their world, children are practicing for how things could be, imaginatively exploring their own potential. Living in a real world that in many ways very much needs saving, that is a very special thing. Flying dragons now, through these wonderful stories, who knows how many readers will fly their own dragons in the future?

Got it covered 

Yet again, Angelo Rinaldi’s compelling jacket illustration perfectly captures the spirit and power of the author’s engaging storytelling. Paul Duffield’s internal illustration of the island of Arcosi is very splendid too.

Paul Duffield

Girls and boys 

One final point. Although it is both wonderful and important to find strong girl characters playing the lead role in so many current children’s novels, feisty female protagonists have recently become so ubiquitous, that it is actually a refreshing change to have a boy as the principal character here, especially one as sensitive and caring as Jowan. Girls and women are far from neglected in this book and many are, quite rightly, in significant roles in both the story and the society depicted. However, whilst I frequently try to emphasise to potential readers that books about girls are not only for girls, we must remember that boys need to be able to find themselves in the stories they read too. A balance certainly needed to be redressed, but it now also needs to be maintained.

Burn by Patrick Ness

Cover: Alejandro Colucci

‘If there were not humans around to create it, the unreality of dragons would cease to be.’ (p 379)

Rarely YA . . .

I generally read a very eclectic range of books and have to admit to what my wife considers the very bad habit of often having several different ones on the go at the same time. These generally include the children’s fantasy I continually enthuse about, but can also encompass sci-fi, thrillers, historical fiction, and much besides. Mick Heron and Ben Aaronovitch are amongst recently savoured lockdown delights.  I also enjoy non-fiction, everything from nature writing (I am a huge fan of Robert Macfarlane) to the Hornby Book of Trains (a bit niche, I know, sorry). At present I am much enjoying a history of the famous Parisienne bookshop, Shakespeare and Company; Paris and bookshops are two of my favourite  places. However, novels aimed at the ‘YA’ market rarely pique my interest, the frequent mixture of dark fantasy and adolescent romance, doesn’t much appeal.

. . . but just now and then 

However, there are a few very notable exceptions. Sally Green’s truly remarkable ‘Half’ trilogy (Half Bad; Half Wild; Half Lost) is one of the most compelling, disturbing and moving  works I have read in the past few years, as are some of the latest works from Marcus Sedgwick (I especially admired The Ghosts of Heaven) and from the brilliant  Frances Hardinge (A Skinful of Shadows and Deeplight). Each of these writers combines remarkably strong, fresh imagination, with compulsive storytelling, but also plumbs depths of feeling and meaning. Theirs are works of the highest quality literature for young adults and would be amongst my very top award winners, if the conferring of book prizes was in my gift. 

Burning bright 

Now, here is another in the same category. Anglo-American author Partick Ness has already won a deservedly high reputation through his ‘diverse zig-zag of books’, so his latest novel Burn was impossible to resist, in whatever bookshop section it was shelved. (Metaphorically speaking of course, bookshops currently being closed. Thank goodness for those independents still doing mail order). This latest novel of his did not disappoint. In fact it thrilled. This was my favourite read of the lockdown so far. (And, as I say, I have read a lot.)

The originality of Patrick Ness’s imagining is stunning, and both his evocative writing and his complex storytelling are equally breathtaking. To start, he places dragons into an otherwise historically plausible 1950s America, with the Cold War at its height and the threat of nuclear annihilation on everyone’s minds. Yet this is not ‘magical realism’, at least not as I expect it. His dragons are both accepted realities in this world, and strong metaphors at the same time. It is an incongruity that is at once implausible and challenging to our understanding of our own world. Dragons abound in contentempory fantasy. But not dragons quite like these. 

Pride and prejudice 

Another monster also stalks the rural American landscape of Burn, and that is an abominable, vicious prejudice. Although clearly engrained in its own place and time, it terrifyingly echoes across to our own world. These narrative elements rub shoulders with religion, cults and control, with destiny and prophesy, with devastating loss and grief, both immediate and longstanding. And, yes, here too are the pangs and pains of adolescence.

As his story develops, Patrick Ness draws increasingly on the concept of parallel worlds. This too is a conceit already extensively exploited in fiction, but his is a far more thoughtful and (again) realistic take than you will find in much sci-fi or fantasy. Whilst I would not label this book magical realism, I might just try to describe it as speculative reality. It plays with many of the tropes of fantasy, just as it plays with the real world of its readers, inside and outside their heads.

None of this prevents Burn from being a totally compelling story. Importantly, too, it is threaded through with the most sensitive exploration of close relationships, including young love, between both opposite and same sex couples. It is a passionate book, and an empowering one. It is deeply disturbing and deeply moving.  It is grotesquely violent and sweetly tender, It is a thoughtful book and a viscerally excitingly one. It is both fantasy and not fantasy. It is about worlds with dragons, worlds with no dragons and the reality of both. It is about worlds with magic and the magic of all worlds. It is about being special enough to save whole worlds; about being ordinary enough to save all worlds.  It is about war and devastation, annihilation. It is about prejudice, anger and hatred, hatred that burns with unimaginable ferocity. But it is ultimately about love; love that cannot vanquish . . . but that can, perhaps, thankfully, survive. 

‘All annihilation was mutual in the end.’ (p 379)

but

‘He stepped out of this world and into the next, intent on finding his love.’ (p 383)

Strange bedfellows?

My current lockdown miscellany