enne📚 reviewed To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose (Nampeshiweisit, #2)
To Ride a Rising Storm
4 stars
To Ride a Rising Storm is the second book in Moniquill Blackgoose's Nampeshiweisit series, an indigenous story about dragons, colonizers, and fantasy dragon school. This was a lot of fun to read, but this felt like mostly open-ended setup for a future book rather than a cohesive story on its own. The ongoing threat in the first book is that if Anequs doesn't pass her classes then her dragon Kasaqua will be killed. The threat in the second book is... question mark??
This book is still a school story at its heart, but it gets a little bit more into larger politics of the world than the first book was able to. The Ravens of Joden are clearly the "hearken back to the whiter past" dissidents, but simultaneously the Jarl in power working against the Ravens is removing their representatives, adding surveillance and preventing free movement on Anequs's island, …
To Ride a Rising Storm is the second book in Moniquill Blackgoose's Nampeshiweisit series, an indigenous story about dragons, colonizers, and fantasy dragon school. This was a lot of fun to read, but this felt like mostly open-ended setup for a future book rather than a cohesive story on its own. The ongoing threat in the first book is that if Anequs doesn't pass her classes then her dragon Kasaqua will be killed. The threat in the second book is... question mark??
This book is still a school story at its heart, but it gets a little bit more into larger politics of the world than the first book was able to. The Ravens of Joden are clearly the "hearken back to the whiter past" dissidents, but simultaneously the Jarl in power working against the Ravens is removing their representatives, adding surveillance and preventing free movement on Anequs's island, and suppressing dissent everywhere. It feels like there's some room for nuance about Anequs choosing to support neither of these powers (in some future book). All of this is great.
The polyamory angle is more nuanced than I would have expected to get from a young adult book. Anequs is interested in both Liberty (a black school servant) and Theod (a fellow indigenous dragoneer classmate). This is my own personal beef with other fiction (YA specifically), but I really dislike love triangles that turn into jealousy subplots and it's a relief that there's none of that here. I like that all three of them are very different people with different needs. Theod is afraid of not living up to Anglish morals and would prefer marriage. Anequs wishes she could bring everybody back to her home island where these sorts of relationships are supported, but also wants nothing to do with marriage right now. Liberty knows she could never marry Anequs and dreams of her own place to live above a shop (and definitely not Anequs' island).
As a reader it's easy to root for Anequs to just follow her heart, but Theod and Liberty both bring their own pragmatism about the world they're living in and the precarity of their social relationships. One small detail I also appreciate that this book has the three of them asking about kissing (and sometimes even declining). Maybe it feels too adult and communication-forward, but it makes it very comfy to me.
I enjoyed the book, but the pacing was extremely unexpected. I remarked to myself while reading that I was on page 270/440 and Anequs is still in the first week of classes learning about in-universe atomic bonds without there being any real conflict yet. This book is characterized by ongoing simmering background political tension while setting up a lot of ongoing plotlines. The first big event that feels like a payoff of the tension happens outside of the school, away from Anequs, most of the way through the book. Then, only in the final chapter or two does the final ball scene escalate into something more substantial. I don't know that I would recommend reading this book until the next book is out.
