Burn (Patrick Ness)

Burn
Patrick Ness
Quill Tree Books
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Historical Fiction
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: If Sarah Dewhurst and her father weren't so poor, they could've hired humans to clear acreage on their struggling farm in rural Frome, Washington. Instead, they must make do with Kazimir, a one-eyed Russian blue dragon. This isn't going to help their standing in the community, where Sarah is already looked at askance because her late mother was black and her father is white. The postwar 1950's world is still reeling from the invention of the atomic bomb and under the growing tension of the Cold War - about to be exacerbated exponentially as Russia prepares to launch the world's first satellite. Despite the fact that "Russian" is just a geographic name, not a political affiliation, as dragons have no interest in petty human governments, the people of Frome aren't any more kindly disposed to non-Americans than anywhere else in the country right now... and, of course, nobody really feels comfortable around dragons, even though there's been peace between the species for over two hundred years. But there's more to the dragon's visit than mere hired labor. He reveals to Sarah that he was brought to Frome by a dragon prophecy about averting the end of the world... the same prophecy that drives a young Believer, a cultish dragon-worshipper, from his hidden enclave on a mission for the dragon goddess herself.

REVIEW: I thought I was going to enjoy this alternate-reality take on the early days of the Cold War, placed in a world with dragons. At first, I did like it. Ness slowly crafts the setting and characters, with nobody being flat or excessively stupid to further the storyline. As elements of the prophecy play out and people and events slowly come together, it builds to a fine climax... halfway through the book. Then the story jumps to a parallel world, a sort of second chance at things that went wrong, even as an even greater threat is unleashed on an unprepared and dragonless Earth. Here is where Ness really started losing me, as descriptions tipped over the line from rich to outright tedious and repetitious. The second climax draws things out even longer than the first one, with more than one event drawing an incredulous eye-roll. And then the ending... it not only overexplained itself, but it threw a bit of a wet blanket on the whole concept of dragons, while trying to be Clever and Literary about it. I (barely) enjoyed enough of the earlier ideas to justify an Okay rating, but that's about it.

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