As we approach the end of 2023, many of the book-reading community on Twitter seem to be looking back over last 12 months – whether that be sharing whether or not they’ve met the reading targets they’ve set themselves on Goodreads, waxing lyrical about their favourite books published this year or sharing the love with recommendations in a daily Advent Calendar style thread.
I promised myself back in January that I would read more Young Adult titles this year – something I have managed to stick to for once – but as 2024 comes ever closer, and I reflect on what I have read, middle grade fantasy is still top of my list. In this title, first released in 2018, by Liz Flanagan – author of the gorgeous Wildsmith stories – I have found a read that most definitely fits into that category and does so in fine style. Exciting, thought-provoking in the extreme and with fabulous characters, this is a book that I have really enjoyed and one to which I cannot wait to read the sequel which is even now calling to me from my TBR shelf.
All is calm when our story opens for Milla, a serving girl who is hiding in an orange tree in her employer’s courtyard to catch her breath and take five minutes for herself. Having until now been too busy to eat, she plucks an orange from a branch and savours its sweet flesh while thinking about the recent changes in the city where she lives that have brought soldiers onto its streets. Hearing voices, Milla wonders who is close by and spots fellow servant Lanys accompanied by a stranger who she asks to wait while she alerts her master, Nestan, to his visitor’s presence. Ensuring she is not seen, Milla watches as the man hooks an oddly shaped bag he is carrying over a branch of the tree and wonders what is hidden within its beautiful depths
As Lanys returns with Nestan, a masked intruder asks the man where it is and commands him to give it to me, before stabbing him when he refuses to hand anything over. Unsure as to what to do, Milla leaves the bag where it is as she hastens to help Nestan’s daughter, and her friend, Tarya prepare for a grand party to be held that evening by the city’s Duke Olvar, which the girls will be attending along with Nestan and Tarya’s twin brother Isak. At the party, the duke announces he will in future be known as the First Dragon Duke of Arcosi, taking the emblem of the now dead dragons that once inhabited the city as his symbol.
With the party in full swing, the celebrations are interrupted by a woman who announces that the dragons will return but they will never belong to the duke before she disappears, leaving everyone assembled astonished. When Milla and the others return home, Milla checks on the bag and discovers that it holds four coloured eggs, which she feels compelled to protect. As she does her best to care for them, however, their presence is discovered and an angry Nestan gifts the eggs to Olvar. Obsessed by the eggs, Olvar is desperate to bond with the dragons he believes are inside them when they hatch and as his desperation to own a dragon escalates, his people are driven apart and war threatens the kingdom. Can Milla and her friends work to restore peace to Arcosi and what will happen to the dukedom and its inhabitants if the legendary creatures do return?
Milla is a strong character who is fiercely loyal to her friends and to the dragons. Although a servant and not a Norlander, like Nestan and his family, she is best friends with the far more privileged Tarya who has only her company and that of her twin on which to rely. Determined to protect the eggs at all costs, she finds herself at odds with some of those around her and keeping secrets from Nestan for the first time in her short life – something that she cannot explain other than simply knowing that that is what she should do – and finds herself in huge trouble with him when he discovers what she has done. He, however, is the least of her worries because as both a Sartolan and a servant, when Olvar discovers that she has been hiding the eggs she is put in genuine fear for her life.
Olvar is the most horrible of bad guys and as the book progresses, we see just how vile he truly has been – and is prepared to be – in his pursuit of power. Young readers will be shocked at his treatment not only of the citizens for whom he is responsible but also his family as he ruthlessly pursues his goal. The inequality between the two groups of people within his domain is one that he fuels throughout the book and astute young readers will draw many parallels with real-world situations where people are treated unfairly or cruelly simply through the accident of their birth to the wrong parents.
Exciting and tense, I especially enjoyed the brilliantly drawn relationships not just between Milla and those around her but also between Tarya, Isak and Olvar’s son Vigo, which are entirely credible and added enormously to the tension in the story, making this a great read for upper KS2 upwards.
My enormous thanks go to publicist Antonia Wilkinson and UCLan Publishing for my gifted copies of Dragon Daughter, which is on sale now, and Book 2, Rise of the Shadow Dragons, which publishes 4th January. Book 3, Rise of the Shadow Dragons, hits the shelves on May 6th.
Mrs Sydney's Famous World's Smallest Library 
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