Dragonwings
Mar. 8th, 2011 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
booksofafeatherShort review: A young boy from China travels to a foreign land to be with his father, full of strange people they see as "demons", and try to live among them. But the father, Windrider, believes in a secret heritage he carries inside... and though few people there understand it, with the help of his son, who believes, he tries to bring it to life, to live as a dragon in the modern world.
Writing: It's a slow book, but has a lot of an atmospheric feel of (for me) a very different culture.
From a winged person's perspective...: Even though Windrider chooses to explore his dragon nature by building a device for flight, there isn't a lot about wings... this book is more about identity. It's about a man's faith to live as a dragon, even without his dragon body, and despite that few people believe him, by doing what he thinks a dragon should do. Ultimately the feeling behind it is "a desire to pursue a dream of being yourself, even if most people don't think it's sensible". The "living as a dragon" is subtle and it might be a good model for otherkin, "how to bring your inner self into the human world, while still living in a human way".
Trigger warnings: There weren't any for me, but others might find them.
More thoughts...: As a book about "the experience of having wings or longing for flight", this is not a book I would start with. It's a little bit of a subtle story and sometimes confusing, if you are not familiar with the cultural story it tries to tell. It has a very strong feeling of a "story from its culture", but being that way, going into it, it might not be the type of story that readers are familiar with. I think part of my feeling was that I didn't relate to it well, not really understanding the ideas that it is based on... it seems like a fascinating, but hard to navigate look at a world I can only understand in pieces. Others, more familiar with the issues it talks about may not have this problem.
It does have some good messages to teach: about the nature of reality, there is this quote, which you might almost miss, but....
Too often people think that what we experience inside ourselves, in visions, dreams, or in a metaphysical sense, etc. is "less real". But Windrider doesn't believe that and stands by his beliefs even though they are unpopular.
And fliers will maybe feel inspired by the description that vehicle flight is "an imperfect attempt to capture the magic of the dragons", comparing the heavy wings of the plane to the light wings that Windrider has in the dragon vision. The book acknowledges that to the winged, real flight will always be with our own bodies, and nothing else will quite be the same. Still, many otherkin take up as pilots or some similar thing to get a sense of the feeling, and this gives them something, too, that is not to be ignored.
So the book has a lot of inspiration in it. However, some people might find it slow and that the actual content of flying is a little few and far between. Whether you can like the book I think will depend on whether you like the story for the flying's sake, or you enjoy the rest of the cultural experience of the story as well. If you enjoy both then this will be a really good book. But just about flying, this book has some good wisdom, but might not be at the top of your reading list. I think I give it three out of five.
Writing: It's a slow book, but has a lot of an atmospheric feel of (for me) a very different culture.
From a winged person's perspective...: Even though Windrider chooses to explore his dragon nature by building a device for flight, there isn't a lot about wings... this book is more about identity. It's about a man's faith to live as a dragon, even without his dragon body, and despite that few people believe him, by doing what he thinks a dragon should do. Ultimately the feeling behind it is "a desire to pursue a dream of being yourself, even if most people don't think it's sensible". The "living as a dragon" is subtle and it might be a good model for otherkin, "how to bring your inner self into the human world, while still living in a human way".
Trigger warnings: There weren't any for me, but others might find them.
More thoughts...: As a book about "the experience of having wings or longing for flight", this is not a book I would start with. It's a little bit of a subtle story and sometimes confusing, if you are not familiar with the cultural story it tries to tell. It has a very strong feeling of a "story from its culture", but being that way, going into it, it might not be the type of story that readers are familiar with. I think part of my feeling was that I didn't relate to it well, not really understanding the ideas that it is based on... it seems like a fascinating, but hard to navigate look at a world I can only understand in pieces. Others, more familiar with the issues it talks about may not have this problem.
It does have some good messages to teach: about the nature of reality, there is this quote, which you might almost miss, but....
When I was there on the beach and in the dragon kingdom, it was more real a time than this.
Too often people think that what we experience inside ourselves, in visions, dreams, or in a metaphysical sense, etc. is "less real". But Windrider doesn't believe that and stands by his beliefs even though they are unpopular.
And fliers will maybe feel inspired by the description that vehicle flight is "an imperfect attempt to capture the magic of the dragons", comparing the heavy wings of the plane to the light wings that Windrider has in the dragon vision. The book acknowledges that to the winged, real flight will always be with our own bodies, and nothing else will quite be the same. Still, many otherkin take up as pilots or some similar thing to get a sense of the feeling, and this gives them something, too, that is not to be ignored.
So the book has a lot of inspiration in it. However, some people might find it slow and that the actual content of flying is a little few and far between. Whether you can like the book I think will depend on whether you like the story for the flying's sake, or you enjoy the rest of the cultural experience of the story as well. If you enjoy both then this will be a really good book. But just about flying, this book has some good wisdom, but might not be at the top of your reading list. I think I give it three out of five.
