Review
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Title: A Dragon & Her Girl
Editors: Joe Monson and Jaleta Clegg
Publisher: Hemelein Publications
Genre: Fantasy, anthology
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 289
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9781642780024
Price: 17.99
Reviewed by Adam McLain for the Association for Mormon Letters
Dragons are a dime a dozen in fantasy media—and, honestly, that’s how it should be. Giant, fire-breathing monsters that bring destruction and rain hellfire from the skies, there’s nothing that screams “epic” more than a ferocious, scaly beast with long fangs and jagged spikes licking its chops, preparing to savor your skin and bones. Dragons, as with all tropes, have many iterations and versions. From the monsters of doom that protect princesses in towers to cuddly, dogged companions who occasionally breathe fire to hungry hatchlings begging for some milk to wise sages that live in caverns and share their hearts with princes, dragons of all sorts and sizes fill the dreams of fantasy. And the same is true with Hemelein Publications’ second LTUE Benefit Anthology, A Dragon & Her Girl.
A Dragon & Her Girl is an anthology of twenty fantasy adventures written from a single premise: the story contains a dragon and a girl. With this foundational premise, the diverse stories in the collection attempt to tackle, subvert, and adventure with the established tropes of dragons and female characters in fantasy. While some succeed at this feat, others offer only a pittance toward redefining the genre, instead reveling in the tropes of beastly ferocity or distressing damsels. I find benefit in both of these approaches toward writing dragons: sometimes a reader wants a cliché-driven giant, fire-breathing dragon or a smart-alecky dragon who frustrates the main character, while other times a reader desires something innovative or subversive, a breath of fresh fire rather than a plume of acrid smoke. A Dragon & Her Girl assembles numerous approaches to writing this fantasy trope, and I find that in that vast array of approaches, many readers will feel readerly fulfillment with this collection.
When the subject of dragons and girls come up, the first trope one might think of is the damsel in distress: a girl is protected in a tower by a dragon that a man must then slay to win fair maiden’s hand. But Max Florschutz, David VonAllmen, Mercedes Lackey, and Elisabeth Waters have different ideas for this concept. In “A Game of Stakes,” Florschutz upends the trope of the damsel in the tower by making dragons a work-for-hire; a princess can pay one to guard them while princes come to win her hand. David VonAllmen plays with the same idea of searching for a damsel in “Dragon’s Hand,” but instead invests it in a mother seeking a daughter in distress; although VonAllmen leaves the story open to more adventures, his emphasis on Jane’s characterization and her capability of handling the world at hand provide for an intriguing tale. Lackey’s and Waters’s story, “Dragon in Distress,” centers on a dragon who becomes distressed when he loses his damsel and must go on an adventure to find her. As placed throughout this collection—Florschutz begins, VonAllmen is in the middle, and Lackey and Waters end—this shows the variety of voice and style at play. Florchutz’s work is centered on two characters, the dragon and the woman, VonAllmen emphasizes a single woman, and Lackey and Waters make the dragon experience the world in his search for his damsel, bringing in strong female characters and a showing rather than mentioning a larger world at play. The stories show the complexity by which the short story can tackle this fantasy trope.
Dragons, of course, aren’t just meant to be guardians of women; they can also be considered magical, god-gifted, or intelligent and wise beyond normal humans. In this trope, the dragon becomes a being separated from human beings yet a necessary plot point or part of the magic system. In “Li Na and the Dragon,” for example, Scott R. Parkin weaves a cross-generational tale about the curse a dragon has placed on a family and the will to break it. Gerri Leen’s “Here by Choice,” like Parkin’s story, is an Asian-influenced short story, but it refocuses the importance of the magical dragon onto the dragon as the central character whose magic affects the world. This flip—the dragon as the main character or the dragon as the antagonist or side character—provides an interesting and engaging breadth to the stories in the collection. Other stories that centralize the dragon are “Amélie’s Guardian” by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and “Aer’Vicus” by Jodi L. Milner, in which the dragons provide guidance and plot movement toward the result—the safety of a kingdom or the safety of a little girl.
Of course, “Aer’Vicus,” like many of these stories, straddles different types of story: in Milner’s text, the dragon is central to the plot but it also plays out epic fantasy on a miniature scale by making the conflict and consequences of the plot centered around the fall of a kingdom. In a similar vein, Josh Brown applies various epic fantasy tropes in “Loyalties” by linking together various beings who go on a quest to meet a dragon. “Ash and Blood” by Hannah Marie tells a revenge story with an excellent reveal and reversal that leaves readers fulfilled—yet longing, just enough, to wonder what else occurs in the word she’s created. Wendy Nikel’s tragic “Rain Like Diamonds,” in a similar vein to “Ash and Blood,” is a quiet, sorrowful epic that deals with the justice of a kingdom and the consequence of choices.
Fairy tales also have a place in dragon lore and cliche. Whether the dragon is the end of the tale—like in Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty—or the dragon is where the story centers—like in Pete’s Dragon—the dragon brings either a terrifying antagonism to the story or a playful engagement with the fairy tale world. Jaleta Clegg’s comedic “High Noon at the Oasis” brings together a cursed unicorn and a djinn at an oasis; with its hilarious reversals and witty dialogue, it brings a lot of levity to the intensity of dragons. Another fun tale with an excellent twist is Alex Shvartsman’s “Burying Treasure,” about a wizard who must bury the dragon’s treasure in the woods and asks for help from the local villagers. Two stories deal with precious minerals and greedy royalty. In “The Diamond-Spitting Knight,” S. E. Page plays on the fairy tale tropes of a girl in a dungeon, asked to perform magical tasks, but subverts it with the inclusion of a dragon longing for freedom. Melva L. Gifford’s “Taking out the Trash,” tells a delightful story about a magic student doing exactly that—taking out the trash; in Gifford’s conceptualization of the profane within the magical, though, a short, fun story reveals itself, which is a much-needed reminder with the many epically consequential stories surrounding it. Julia H. West’s “Taking Wing” is a rather intimate story about a street urchin, seeking coin from a passerby, who befriends the gargoyle on the majestic building behind her; West’s tale interrogates the intersection of imagination and hope as she allows readers to decide its ending.
Dragons can also simply be considered beasts—nothing more than large lizards who can fly and breathe fire. Terrifying, yes, but still animals. In Christopher Baxter’s “The Wild Ride,” a cross-dimensional tale of a dragon rodeo gone awry is rather entertaining and endearing, as Baxter focuses on the relationship of his characters with the backdrop of jumping from dragon back to dragon back. Baxter’s story was my favorite out of the collection because of its ingenuity and creativity. M. K. Hutchins’s “Dragon Soap” focuses on a family in medical trouble after an accident in the deadly swamp where dragons live and are hunted by humans as ingredients in a part of healing lye; Hutchins is rather masterful at then weaving this focalized problem into a tale that has ramifications for not just the family but also the village and economy established in the region.
The final four stories that I’ll discuss from the collection are what I find to be the most interesting, especially if you’re seeking a different type of read than the medieval dragon. Michaelene Pendleton’s “Rising Star,” tells the story of a dragon who sleeps and wakes in the contemporary world; the dragon is then found by a forlorn movie producer who is down on his luck. Together, they raise each other’s fortunes in fun and exciting ways. Sam Knight’s strange story “Therapy for a Dragon” makes readers question reality and who is the dragon as a woman goes through a therapy session because she might be hearing voices or seeing things. “Lullaby” by John D. Payne is a rather sweet and caring story about dragons nursing hatchlings and dealing with the stress of being parents. What it lacks in epic action, it makes up for in realist depictions of parenting and childcare.