Wind, another male with straight black hair and hooded eyes, said, “The firegard is the best gard.”

On the last word, he pounded the tabletop with his fist, and the rest followed suit, jumping our plates.

Blaze giggled and belatedly pounded the table, too. “What do you do?”

“Burn down forests,” Shroud said, tossing back his blond hair.

Some people just can’t catch a break, and that’s extra true when you’re a dragon whose reputation precedes her, in a world where dragons are a heavily policed minority who are viewed with a lot of suspicion as it is.

The Legend of Damndrake is a story of a disenfranchised outsider doing her best to survive and protect her family in a system designed to oppress and hurt them both. In this world, dragons are under the thumb of humans, who control the allocation of the rare mineral they need to grow and thrive, and so serve them in rigid hierarchies that suit human needs. Born small for her size thanks to slavers forcing her to hatch early, Damndrake had to grow up the hard way and thanks to that, she has the strength (and the hardened claws) to protect herself and her sister Blaze from all but the most dangerous of threats: a bureaucracy that she doesn’t understand and that doesn’t care about her.

This book has a lot going for it. It claims to be “inspired by every dragon story ever” in the blurb, but feels like an original take on dragons that adds lots of elements you don’t normally see in the genre. They’re obviously one of the archetypical fantasy creatures for a reason, and it’s hard to do something really new with them. Author N. E. White has successfully done that by including the mythical metal rhenus, which dragons need to grow and which humans control the mining and production of, creating an artificial scarcity that keeps dragons under control. We see evidence throughout the book of dragons as an oppressed population, with one of the hardest hitting being Damndrake’s younger sister Blaze being told she can’t learn to read using her people’s native language because it’s “insurgent” to do so.

Damndrake and Blaze are haunted by a past experience with a dragon named Smoke, who doesn’t appear for most of the book but casts a menacing shadow over the whole story, as fleeing from him is the primary motivator they have in making most of their decisions. I did find that in the first third of the book, prior to letting the reader in on just why this character was so dangerous, the repeated mentions of him and the things he’d done were kind of frustratingly vague, with even Damndrake’s first person narration being cagey about just what had happened to her. I understanding keeping it from strangers but I’m not sure I understood why something that was always on her mind was being occluded. That said. Damndrake is an interesting study in victimhood, really pushing back against the ‘perfect victim’ narrative. She’s abrasive and distrusting and violent, and assumes the worst about everyone and is always ready to betray them and leave at a moment’s notice, because that’s what she’s grown up having to do. A lot of people don’t like her much because she’s not particularly easy to like, and I actually quite like that about her, because it makes a lot of sense.

That said, it can sometimes make the narration feel a bit repetitive as Damndrake decides she trusts or likes someone, and then something happens that makes her think she can’t trust them again, and then she decides she likes them again. As much as it makes sense for the character, I do wish it had felt more tense instead repetitive. I also wish that her journey felt a little bit less aimless. There were a lot of points in The Legend of Damndrake where I felt unsure about why we were watching certain events or spending so much time lingering in a certain location. There were also a lot of chapters at various points that were full of conversations that were cleverly designed so they didn’t feel like exposition, which is hard to do and is mostly done smoothly, but which I still noticed. The story also jumps between focusing on the interpersonal and romantic storyline and the work focused storyline about Damndrake’s job as a firegard, which while a very interesting and unique element of the book, does take her away from the other storylines for long periods that don’t always feel hugely connected to the rest of the story.

The Legend of Damndrake is a great book for people who really want a dragon story that does something different, and people who want a fantasy novel that comments very sharply on colonialism and racism. And it ends with a strong hook for a sequel that I’m sure will deliver more of the same!