ohhhh man oh man oh man this had a lot of stuff i really liked but also some stuff i really didn't like. in my opinion the good outweighed the bad but i was definitely left feeling unsatisfied in certain aspects.

the good:

-dragons <3 intelligent dragons in an urban fantasy setting <33 (is it still urban fantasy if it's historical?)

Spoiler

polyamorous lesbian dragons <33333

-honestly i liked alex. she perhaps doesn't have the most satisfying perspective to read from because she's a child for the majority of the book but i have a bias for smart exhausted kids doing their best who are a little mean and snappy sometimes.

-i liked the little dragoning vignettes interspersed throughout the story-based chapters. this might be an unpopular opinion but i thought they were fun. i liked that they gave us insight into some of the perspectives we didn't get to see in the straightforward narrative (which does tie into the bad a little bit but we'll get there).

-very sapphic power fantasy in many aspects and i'm always down for that.

the bad:

-feminism leaned too gender essentialist for my liking. they do sort of combat that more towards the end

Spoiler

(approximately 7% of dragons were trans women and less than half were mothers)

but there was still sooooo much shit that made me roll my eyes. especially that drawing of a uterus transforming into a dragon's head or whatever. i cannot read feminist literature that makes it all about Divine Feminine Biological Magic at this point in my life i am done with it. this was going to lower the book a whole star if they didn't kind of backpedal there at the end.

-general lack of diversity in the main cast. if i'm remembering right every single main character was white and cisgender. there's so much you could do with like, what the dragoning means to people with such different lived experiences, but we only get to see more "different from the norm" dragons in short snippets.

Spoiler

also, if dragoning isn't actually sex-linked like it was originally assumed to be, i'm surprised there was never a single anecdote of men of color or gay men transforming. i know this is primarily a women's power narrative, but feminism should be intersectional if you actually want to make a statement with it.

idk some reviews are saying this was specifically meant to be about the experiences of the middle class white housewife demographic so it makes sense it was primarily about them but i still wish we got more varied perspectives.

-no butch dragons? :( this is more a personal pet peeve but you've got giant scaly fire-breathing beasts and they're all still trying to conform to femininity? did marla have to wear bright red lipstick?

Spoiler

in general the whole "giant dragons doing mundane human things" came off as cringy to me more than it came off as like. meaningful. i don't even mind that a lot of the dragons came home in the end but like. the depictions of dragons knitting and applying lipstick felt dumb to me. i came here for dragons being dragons. i genuinely could not care less about dragons trying to be humans.

anyway yeah, i enjoyed it, but if any of the stuff in the bad section is a dealbreaker for you you probably will not. i am literally always on the lookout for dragon literature so you know. maybe it's lowered my standards.