Dragon Pearl

by Yoon Ha Lee

[nannah]

Dragon Pearl is a fun middle grade book chock-full of adventure, even though I might not have seen its merit during the first half. It struggled to get going, but once the momentum picked up, I couldn’t resist the story and its characters. Plus, the book has characters who are gender fluid and and who use gender neutral pronouns!

Book content warnings:
Murder (with an exploration of death and ghosts/this is just in case)

Min, a thirteen-year-old Gumiho (fox-spirit), lives on the planet Jinju, a poor, backwater place where there’s only rare opportunities to get off and find adventure. Because of this, Min lives with her mother and aunties -- and often feels caged and smothered by them. She longs to follow her beloved brother, Jun, into space as a part of the Space Forces to see the Thousand Worlds.

But when the family finds out Jun may have deserted the Forces to find an all-powerful Dragon Pearl with the ability to create and destroy worlds, Min is determined to find out what happened to him. She sneaks off-planet and joins the Forces herself in the guise of a dead cadet. But her relatively straightforward plan gets torn apart as soon as she arrives when she finds out she’s haunted, when the Captain of the Forces isn’t what he seems, and when her own loyalties are tested.

In the beginning, I wasn’t enchanted. What really threw me off was the writing. It’s serviceable at best and almost seems too juvenile, even for middle grade. There were passages like “the lasting prejudice against us annoyed me.” I mean … of course? I think kids are smart enough to understand what prejudice is without it literally being Spelled Out for them on the page. Especially since later in the paragraph, she describes why fox-spirits are treated worse than other supernaturals; there’s just wording like this that makes you feel like the writing is talking down at you.

However … while the writing has many problems and is difficult to read because of the many beats between dialogue/too much dialogue per descriptions (personal opinion), there are other things that just shine! The characters. It was revealed early on that fox-spirits usually choose to be female, but can be male if they want to (I hope other genders are included here). But … there are gender fluid characters! Plus one of the major secondary characters, Sujin, whom Min befriends in the Space Forces, uses “they” pronouns. And it just flows naturally. This is the first I’ve read a book with such gender diversity, and I nearly cried.

Now pacing. The beginning was slow -- and hard to get into. But midway during Min’s time in the Space Forces, things picked up so much that I never wanted to stop reading. Min’s relationship with her new friends, Sujin the goblin and Haneul the Dragon -- and maybe even Jang (the ghost that’s haunting her) made the book a hundred times more enjoyable. They’re a great ensemble cast. Plus Min is wracked with guilt from all sides, making her every decision more difficult. The tension really adds up toward the climax, which ended in a way that left me satisfied.

So yeah, while initially I was gearing up for some ugly review, I did a complete 180. I think if I would have read this as a kid, it would have been one of my favorites.