James Nicoll Reviews

Neon Yang’s 2025 Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame is an upcoming secondary universe fantasy novella.

Yeva fends off a newborn dragon. In so doing, she saves her younger sister’s life at the cost of her own. Well, in a sense. She is still alive, but has lost control of her life.

While struggling with the dragon, Yeva manifested gifts inherited from her father, gifts he hoped she would be spared. Those gifts make her an ideal dragon hunter. Therefore, he sends Yeva to distant Mithrandon in the Thrandic Empire, where she will be trained as a guildknight in the Sun Emperor’s service.

The guildknights are not at all keen on accepting a mixed-race newcomer. Nevertheless, Yeva’s aptitude blossoms into skills too remarkable to discard simply because of her unfortunate choice of mother. In any case, as long as Yava keeps her armor and helmet on, nobody of quality need be subjected to her race.

The young Sun Emperor is determined to prove himself a great warlord. The nations bordering the Sun Empire are distressingly uncooperative. Therefore, news of a dragon in nearby ​“Quentona” (known to its inhabitants and to Yeva as Quanbao) is welcome. Whereas the Thrandic Empire is determined to exterminate dragons, Quanbao reveres them. All the Sun Emperor need do is dispatch guildknights to Quanbao, claiming that the reported dragon is one that fled the Sun Empire, and surely culture clash will provide a pretext for the Sun Empire to invade.

Master of the guildknights Emory Deerland is unenthusiastic about the Sun Emperor’s desire for unnecessary war. Instead of sending a troop of guildknights, he sends just one, his cousin Yeva. Where a garrison of soldiers would be sure to offend, perhaps a single visitor will not.

The crisis could not come at a worse time for Quanbao. Its former king has died, and the heir, Lady Sookhee, has yet to be invested as king. Furthermore, Lady Sookhee’s health is delicate, requiring her to withdraw from time to time.

Luckily for Quanbao, Yeva has little interest in facilitating the Sun Emperor’s conquest. Despite the profound cultural differences, she becomes fond of Quanbao. In the case of Lady Sookhee, more than fond.

Too bad for Yeva that she inadvertently provokes the international crisis she was hoping to avert.

~oOo~

A large, heavily-armed empire run by bigots seeking to invade and annex a smaller nation purely to satisfy its ruler’s ego? Where do writers get their crazy ideas¹?

For an empire that has based itself on hating and killing dragons, the empire knows surprisingly little about dragons. Or perhaps it is because the empire’s self-image involves dragon killing, they’ve avoided learning anything that might interfere with their chosen mission. For example, asking why other nations revere dragons would only invite the question of whether the empire should as well².

It’s interesting, at least to me, how many speculative fiction works have as a core assumption that humans tend to cause extinctions, mass or otherwise. The fact dragons have become rare is plot relevant. One wonders how many other magical species are no longer found in proximity to humans.

I didn’t really enjoy this but not for any defensible reason. It just wasn’t the story I wanted to read at this particular time. I am pretty sure that mileage will vary for many other readers… but in this case, I don’t mind³.

This was a perfectly acceptable fantasy that rang the bells one might expect — alienation, imperialism, self-discovery, true love — and did so capably, if predictably. Being able to see the path the story has to take isn’t necessarily a bad thing. How many people are astonished when Columbo manages to trick the antagonist into revealing themselves yet again? Knowing what you want to do with a story, and then doing it is a valuable skill for an author to have.

Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame is available here (Macmillan), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: America delenda est.

2: Mind you, the dragon-loving nations really need someone like Gerald Durrell to establish a safe haven for dragons to rebuild their numbers. Certain aspect of draconic biology may make that untenable.

3: There have been some books I thought so bad that I was upset by any good reviews, awards, etc. How could they not see…

This was not such a book.