'To Ride to Rising Storm' review: Fired up for more dragons

Moniquill Blackgoose’s debut, "To Shape a Dragon’s Breath," a story about an Indigenous woman training to become a dragon rider against the background of American colonization, was one of the best novels of 2023, so this sequel is entirely welcome. Anequs is still studying to be a dragon rider (or "dragoneer"), but she finds herself at the center of a power struggle among the Norse-inspired "Anglish" colonizers. This time around, her allies are more varied and the debates more complex, as a threat that feels existential comes to Anequs’s island home.

"To Ride a Rising Storm" is every bit the middle book of a planned trilogy, expanding the horizon while setting up plot points that should pay off later. Still, Blackgoose is skilled as ever at injecting suspense into scenes of seemingly genial conversation. It helps that Anequs often seems oblivious to the precarity of her situation, like a horror-movie protagonist who ventures into a dark basement no matter how loudly the audience yells not to.

The added complexity serves this book well. We meet more characters who are neither Indigenous nor Anglish, introducing nuance to the power imbalances at the heart of the story. Anequs’s love life heats up — and in the book’s best moments, she’s forced to confront how her rebellions risk hurting those she loves. The question of how to treat dragons — as beasts to be tamed or companions to be appreciated — slowly reveals more dimensions to the central issue of these books: What is civilization, and whose knowledge counts as important? This ongoing trilogy continues to be essential reading.