Book 6 of 2023: Dragon's Bait

Dragon's Bait by Vivian Vande Velde. Such a nice story this was, the one and only flaw it had was that it was too short (about two hours to read).

Set in a fantasy world, the main character (Alys) was accused of being a witch because the store owner next to her family's tin shop wanted their shop/land. Her mother had died early on and her father was very sick, so only Alys was keeping the store going. Without her, nothing would stand in the way of the male shop owner next door just taking her land.

To kill two birds with one stone, the village was going to sacrifice Alys to a dragon -- that gets rid of a witch and hopefully keeps the local dragon (Selendrile) from burning farms and killing people.

Selendrile had other ideas, and ended up saving her instead. The two slowly became friends, and he helped her get her revenge.

Selendrile was wonderfully foreign. He could take human (or animal) shape, but he was still other. Even though they spoke the same language, they still had a hard time communicating.

The lessons about gender inequality were generally pretty subtle, other than when Selendrile summed things up. Alys asked why dragons want maidens sacrificed to them, and he replied:

"Dragons don't ask for maidens," he said. "Dragons are offered maidens."

Alys shook her head to show she didn't understand.

"Is a king likely to be a maiden? Or the village headman? It's the men who make the laws that decree that maidens should be offered."

Since this is a YA book, I hope that gets young people thinking.

The moral of the story is that revenge ends up hurting the person who is getting the revenge more than anyone else, which is another lesson I appreciate.

Edit: Ah, reading Goodreads reviews, this might be why it's so short:

Published in 1992, this book suffers from the "this book is for young adults so it must be short" mentality that existed back then.