Burn

Alternate history/fantasy at the highest level.

Our setting is rural Washington in a 1957 very much like our own, where high-schooler Sarah Dewhurst is waiting with her father in a parking lot to meet the laborer he is hiring to clear some fields -- a dragon.

And that's the big "not our world" difference. Dragons and humanity co-exist, and they've been at peace for 200 years or so. It's a somewhat uneasy peace, and neither species much trusts the other, but there's not a recorded case of a dragon killing a human in centuries. (For a human to kill a dragon would require so precise a blow that it's not thought of as a practical possibility.)

Ness quickly sets up multiple plotlines, hopping from one POV character to another. Sarah's father show more warns her to stay away from the dragon, who he says cannot be trusted. At school and in their small village, she's dealing with racism -- her late mother was African-American, and her best friend is a Japanese-American boy who spent his early childhood in an internment camp -- especially from a viciously bigoted deputy sheriff.

Meanwhile, north of the Canadian border, a teenaged assassin is making his way to Sarah's town. He's being sent by the Believers, a dragon-worshipping cult; they believe that a great war is about to begin. It's not quite clear who Malcolm is meant to kill, or whether he thinks that killing will start the war or prevent it. He's being pursued by American Federal agents, one of them a former Believer, who are working in Canada without the knowledge of permission of the Canadian government.

The story takes a sharp detour midway through, adding even more characters and dialing the already apocalyptic stakes up a few notches. It's a wild narrative choice, and I spent most of the second half of the novel frantically turning the pages while thinking "how on earth is he making this work?"

Because he does make this work. The story is clever and thrilling, the characters are vivid and well-rounded (*), the mythology and backstory he creates for his dragons feels plausible, and it's all just great fun to read. Ness is realistic about the bigotry his diverse cast would face -- if anything, he's maybe downplaying it -- without turning the novel into OppressionFest '57.

(* -- The biggest exception in this regard is that deputy sheriff, who never quite rises above the level of cartoon bigot. He's a third-tier supporting player, so it's not a major problem, but he is noticably the weakest character in the book.)

Dragon fantasy is very much not my thing, so I went into this one with muted expectations, even though Ness is one of my favorite authors. I needn't have worried; this is some of his best work. Like most of Ness's novels, this is written for a YA audience, but there is enough depth and complexity to the story to keep adult readers entertained.

Ooh, I loved this book. show less

Burn by Patrick Ness is a clever alternate reality story set in the 1950s. This reality is extremely close to our own except for one not so small thing. Dragons exist in this world.

Yet, for as dangerous and unknown as dragons are in this world, they are not the biggest threat to peace. Rather, the danger comes from the USSR and the satellite they soon will be launching into space. This alternate reality version of the Cold War is a little colder and much more of an imminent threat, as the idea of a satellite has both countries on red alert.

With this as the backdrop, enter Sarah Dewhurst and her father. In a desperate attempt to keep the family farm, Sarah's dad hires a dragon to help with the farm work that two people cannot finish. The show more dragon, Kazimir, immediately draws Sarah's curiosity as his words and actions are not what she expected. In fact, it appears that Kazimir has a bit of an agenda regarding Sarah, one that involves a prophecy of world-ending magnitude.

At the same time, Malcolm enters the picture having grown up within a religious sect that worships dragons. These Believers send Malcolm on a mission, the consequences of which also impact the prophecy. As he traverses the world, one in which he has not spent much time, he learns much about himself and comes to realize that not all is as it seems.

In true Ness fashion, Burn seems a simple story but has layers of complexity to it that cover a multitude of topics. For, it is not just about a dragon prophecy and a race to save the world. It also covers racism, gender bias, sexuality discrimination, and extreme religious zeal, bound together in a world of magic. All of this while two countries flex their muscles getting ready to launch the world into a nuclear war.

The characters we meet are ordinary people. No one has superpowers or magic abilities that would set them above others. They are people just trying to live and find happiness in a world that has not been kind to them. They don't ask for involvement in Believer affairs nor want anything to do with the dragon prophecy. Their reactions to such involvement are more than a little believable, which makes us love them all the more for their realism. They are you and me.

To me, Burn is a classic Patrick Ness story. It has a touch of magic to it, but its power and strength lie in its perfectly ordinary characters who have to deal with that magic and its ramifications. He never preaches, nor are his messages complicated or unrealistic. Plus, he ends his story with just enough hope to make you appreciate the journey on which he takes the characters, something we all need right now. show less

2020 might be a year of discovering awesome new books about dragons, since this is not the first new release I’ve come across this year that has been a fantastic read - must do some research and see if there are any other dragon books I should add to my list! Publishing trends or not, Burn was an excellent read and I shall be looking out for more from Patrick Ness. The story starts out simply, in a universe similar to ours during the 1950s, but in which dragons exist alongside humans in an uneasy truce. The story quickly escalates as we are introduced to a cast of characters attempting to cause or prevent a world war and total annihilation across multiple storylines. Usually this straightforward type of story is not my thing, but I show more was immediately drawn into the characters who are a wholly unique and diverse cast with well-developed and engaging personalities that easily draw us in to their backstories and motivations - regardless of whether we think they are “good” or “bad” characters, as life is not quite that simple. As the (potential) end of the world draws nearer the cast’s storylines converge and intersect in interesting ways, causing betrayals, discoveries, and ultimately an incredibly engaging climax and conclusion. I won’t give away the ending, because damn it’s a good twist, but let’s just say kudos to Ness for giving us an awesome story and ending with a revelation that keeps things open and gives us some food for thought. Afterall, maybe some people are just more purely dragon inside than others, and maybe others have different types of hidden magic! show less

Read this in one day. Excellent "alternate reality" book. Sarah lives in the alternate 1957 USA, where dragons roam the planet under a truce between man and dragons. Most of the dragons live in Alaska, where men do not go, but some come into the world of men to work. Sarah's father is a farmer and he hires a blue dragon with one eye to help clear his land for farming. Sarah is told not to give the dragon her name and to leave it alone, but when it stops a racist deputy from bullying her Japanese boyfriend, she becomes more intrigued. Especially when the dragon tells her that someone is coming to kill her and his job is to protect her from dying, otherwise the world will end. Ness cleverly uses cold war tensions between the US and Russia show more and the space race to heighten the possibility that Sarah's death may result in Nuclear war.
Meanwhile, we follow Malcolm (the assassin) on his journey from a cult that worships dragons and prays to a mother figure who knows all about dragon lore. Malcolm is unrelenting in his quest to find Sarah and kill her and his devotion to his mission results in the killing of two FBI agents, which sends others on the hunt for him. In his travels he meets a boy Nelson, who has been kicked out of home for being a homosexual, and Malcolm then falls in love with Nelson. Malcolm and Sarah and the FBI agents' stories all meet in the thrilling conclusion.
I liked how Ness was able to tie up nearly all the "loose ends" at the end of the book and [SPOILER ALERT] the leap the characters take into our Earth reality and the subsequent changes that occur, are all very plausible. He also leaves himself open for the possibility of a sequel involving Malcolm. Great suspenseful read. show less

I didn’t know what to expect with this one, but I loved how unique and strange it was. I didn’t realize it was part of a series, but judging by the way it ended, it certainly could be, and I’d be glad to have a sequel. Even with so much uncertainty about the future at the end, it still works as a stand-alone—there was enough resolution for that. But I wouldn’t say no to seeing more of these characters, especially Kazimir and Malcolm.
The two parts were very different, and I was somewhat disoriented at the beginning of Part 2, but I loved how characters I thought I’d never see again were brought back into the story, and the inevitability of their coming together to face what was possibly the end of the world. I didn’t mind show more the multiple POVs either—there weren’t so many that it hurt characterization really. I don’t usually like when I get the villains’ POVs, and that was true for this book too. I’m not sure how we could have done without them, but I didn’t like being in their heads.
Really original dragon fantasy—I loved it! show less

Boy howdy there is a lot going on here!

Story-wise I think this book was written for me specifically. Like, I possibly wrote it myself in some sort of fever dream and then forgot. Patrick Ness plumbed the depths of my psyche and came up with whatever the hell this is. It’s wild how simultaneously tight and completely off the rails it is - it gets a bit wobbly in the last 100 pages or so, but not nearly as wobbly as you’d expect given the absolute mayhem.

I’m interested to hear different perspectives on its treatment of racism, though. It’s obviously well-meaning but I’m not the right person to decide if it totally sticks the landing in that regard.

The down to earth aspects of Burn tended to draw me in more than the fantasy.

Sarah’s father hires a dragon to help on their farm, but there’s much more to it than she’s aware of, a prophecy that possibly involves Sarah and a war.

Early on I did find a lot of the dragon stuff interesting, they talk, there are different kinds who live in different countries, they hire themselves out as workers, people fear them yet at the same time fantasize about which type they’d be, etc., all of that intrigued me. However to some degree, I felt like most of that ended up going nowhere. There are two dragons featured here but their involvement felt more standard than I’d expected after reading those inventive aspects of their lore mentioned show more towards the beginning of the book.

My other issue with the fantasy parts of the book is how the prophecy is mentioned approximately a billion times yet no one who mentions it actually knows concrete details about the prophecy. Not only did it make it tough to get a handle on what was happening when even the characters themselves weren’t particularly sure of what was happening, but by making the prophecy so malleable it was too easy to insert plot twists. Several of the twists did take me by surprise, which is good, and there’s a character introduced via one of those twists who I adored almost immediately, it’s just that twists don’t feel as earned if there are no rules governing things. I guess I just admire a situation more when an author has to work their way out of a corner and turn a story in a particular direction. When there aren’t really any restrictions placed on the world of the story changing gears doesn’t seem like quite as impressive of a feat.

Burn is told from several points of view, at times the change in POV occurs at a rapid pace so you do have to quickly adjust which can be tricky. As is often the case with so many points of view there were definitely some I preferred to others, like for instance, I really wish more of the story had come from Sarah’s point of view and I probably could have done without Detective Woolf.

What had me most engaged with this one is the 1957 time period and how it related to Sarah being mixed race (black mom, white dad) and dating an American born Japanese boy and Malcolm being gay and falling in love with Nelson and their interactions with police. I tended to be more invested in those moments and in pretty much any family moment than I was in the more fantastical ones.

Obviously I had mixed feelings about this one, but I would encourage other readers to give it a try for themselves since it certainly is something quite different, plus it does touch on timely subject matter (it’s disturbing/depressing how little has changed since 1957) and maybe the fantasy will fit your personal preferences better than they did mine. show less