Anna and the Dragon is Jill Domschot‘s debut speculative fiction novel, an impressive dive into the “soft” supernatural realm. The titular Anna is a computer engineer with mild character quirks who falls for an errant academic with a heart condition and a fixation on dragonry.
Though the title and book cover suggest something of a YA (young adult) story (what isn’t shoehorned into YA nowadays?), yet the subtle speculative manner of Domschot’s plot does away with that label. There’s no pressing need to expose all the anthropologies of the “our-world” legendarium that earmarks YA literature and TV series. Anna and Franklin battle with it in their respective contexts—yeah, there’s history lessons, but it’s well below exhaustive. There’s no need to find out more than what they need to know to avoid getting caught. The tiresome jetsetting around the world to unearth archaeologies and weapons for a final showdown is replaced with bike rides to beaches and phantasmagoric ladder appearances. In holding back, Domschot dodged one of the worst tendencies of modern Westernized storytelling*.
One possible criticism is Domschot’s portrayal of Anna as an inactive agent of change. I can see this as a valid point, though the drastic decision Anna makes within the first few chapters Anna pointedly rebukes this idea. A cardinal rule of fiction is the protagonist must act, not react, but this doesn’t have to be if the character’s flaw is literally (heh) indecision. This may very well be Anna’s destined path to tragedy, since in the partitioned second half of Anna, fate’s hand forces her into a situation of near-complete confusion where she can do nothing but act.
In all, Anna is an enjoyable read, though I may have lowered my expectations since I knew it was a debut. She avoids the simplistic narration of timid first-timers and the overcompensating verbosity of Duning-Kreuger amateurs, landing her safely in the middle. There were a few spots where a good edit could tighten or unloose for a better impact, but those episodes were far between. A more solid second book has potential to take her places.
* You reading this, George Lucas? You stop right there with that midi-chlorian material sciences silliness for Force-sensitive life forms. You should’ve left it as an intuitive power of uncertain boundary and whimsy. Suppressing the urge to over-explain origins will prevent the wondrous mystery from being further plunger-sucked out of the Star Wars EU.
5 Comments
This is a good, substantive review. But I hope you didn’t lower your expectations TOO much. I like your little note to George Lucas.
Thanks. The lowered expectations were from reading Beyond Future Shock and half of a chapter of Hollowland. They both had nearly all rave reviews but BFS had stock characters and was 300 pages too long for the story. Hocking’s book was unreadable pap, but she’s a popular millionaire so who cares how bad it is?
Both were self-published…I think. Hollowland may have been. I don’t know. I always shudder when I remember that I actually read more than a page of it.
I haven’t read either of those, but I am reading Konrath right now. He’s a popular self-pubber, too. He spins a good yarn–clearly does little editing on his books. I think he just churns them out.
I also meant to add a thanks for refuting my 1-star review. You probably weren’t directly refuting it. But you did, anyway, much to my relief.
I do remember reading that review, but not really recently so it wasn’t fresh in mind. I did have it mind while I was reading the book so I made sure to notice. I could go here or there with the inaction criticism, but I wouldn’t consider it a flaw (or meta-flaw of the plot or your writing). Anna isn’t just a lump of chemicals.