Nathan’s Weekly Recommendation List, this week featuring books with dragons.
Every Tuesday I count down five books, shows, movies, whatever related to a particular topic. This week I am looking at books with dragons. Dragons are one of my favorite fantasy creatures and just tropes in general! And now that Fourth Wing is tearing up Booktok and Bookstagram, I thought it would be a good time to look at some other books featuring dragons that I have absolutely loved! In this list I tried to give a good mix of genres and “types” of dragons, so I hope that you find something that looks good to you!
Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter
This book is for the action aficionados out there. This is an African inspired epic fantasy that follows Tau as he trains to become a great swordsman on his path for revenge. This book is insanely bingeable between the training sequences, superpowered humans, demonic possessions, and of course DRAGONS. In the world of Rage of Dragons some women have the ability to call down dragons from the sky at will. I will admit, the dragons in this first book (the series will ultimately be four books, with the second, Fires of Vengeance, already out) are a bit sparse and mostly contained in the beginning and the end of the book, but there promise to be many more in the future.
Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons by Quenby Olson
If you love cozy fantasies or gentle, non-spicy romance with your dragons, definitely check this book out. Miss Percy is a middle-aged spinster who inherits a dragon egg from her recently deceased uncle. With the help of the local vicar, she pulls up her boots in order to figure out how to take care of this baby dragon. Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide is sweet, funny, and gives you those warm fuzzy feelings. The sequel, Miss Percy’s Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons, has already been released with a third and final book due soon!
See my full review of the book here.
If you are looking for more cozy dragons romances, make sure to also check out Scales and Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis for a non-spicy regency romance with just a dash of magic.
Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
What if you took a Jane Austen novel but replaced every character with a dragon? You would have Tooth and Claw, one of the best books I read in 2022. Jo Walton imagines a world reminiscent of Victorian England – full of bourgeoise families, inheritance squabbles, marriage contracts, and all of the other soap opera antics you would expect – but imagines the world as it would be for dragons (including having the dragons eat a relative when they die). This gives the book a fantastical speculative lens to examine social issues from the Victorian period, as well as just being a fun and propulsive novel.
The Tide Child Trilogy by RJ Barker
Beginning with The Bone Ships, RJ Barker’s Tide Child Trilogy is set in a world of massive and terrifying sea dragons….but the dragons are dying. This has created problems because this is a world where wood is rare, and so the major nations of the world rely on the bones of dragons to build ships for trading and warfare. When one last sea dragon is spotted, a crew of disgraced outlaws is tasked with finding it. But is their goal to claim it for their nation, or to make sure no one finds it’s bones to hopefully end naval warfare for good? Full of lovable and loathable characters, some of the best ecological worldbuilding in fantasy, and a great plot, don’t miss out on this if you love nautical fantasy.
You can see my full review of the trilogy here, and also be sure to check out my interview with RJ Barker!
The Dagger and Coin Series by Daniel Abraham
This five-book series (starting with The Dragon’s Path) is about the eternal question – what wins wars, money or armies? A multi-POV epic from the other of The Expanse series, The Dagger and the Coin has betrayals, multiple humanoid species, a spider god, lots of talking about banking, and one of the best villains to ever grace the fantasy genre. It also revels in the “last of its kind” dragon trope. The dragon doesn’t feature much in book one, but has a prominent role in the rest of the series, and he is appropriately sassy and human-despising.
