Nite Fire

Supernatural/Human hibrids. They’re all over the place in literature and myth. Achilles. Dionysus. Helen of Troy. Supernatural father, human mother… (I won’t mention Jesus. Yes, definitely best to leave him out of this….) Human and more than human. It’s a nagging whisper of things we feel – powers we feel inside ourselves, possibilities, dangers.

I liked this modern rendition. Dahlia is the perfect fusion of edgy and timeless. The dragonworld in the backstory was the usual brutal feudalism that is the big cliché of fantasy literature, but Schneider tempers that, and grounds her hybrid in the sharp modernity of an American city. A recognisable place, with office blocks where people work and parks where children play. Her dragon-human heroine drinks coffee, wears cool clothes (sometimes), works out in a gym… But she also shapeshifts, and throws fire, and wrangles all manner of unhuman creatures. Between these poles she drifts between her dragon sensibilities – ruthless and carnal – and the awkward capacity for empathy and friendship that has already, at the start of the book, got her into a lot of trouble.

It’s a layered book. An action packed police procedural. A fantasy with sex and monsters. A character novel, with moments of humour. It glances at a number of very human troubles – the pains of integration, the unease of the displaced, the alienated, the misfits and those who live longer than their friends. The pace of it keeps you surfing through the plot, cresting the waves, looking for what happens. But beneath you, if you ever look down, there’s a lot going on in the water….