Bonus Book! Burn

Burn by Patrick Ness

Fantasy (2020 - 371 pp.)

I don't usually read young adult fantasy novels, but when I do, the back cover of Patrick Ness's Burn sets up a clear winner of a premise:

On a cold Sunday evening in 1957--the very day, in fact, that Dwight David Eisenhower took the oath of office for the second time as president of the United States of America--Sarah Dewhurst waited with her father in the parking lot of the Chevron gas station for the dragon he'd hired to help on the farm...

My mind brimmed with possibilities. Historical labour relations fiction, like In the Days of the Comet? A sleek, sober take on the '50s, a la Queen's Gambit? A fresh take on dragons, like His Majesty's Dragon and Throne of Jade? Burn is also a very impressive book physically. My hardcover copy has a beautiful black dust jacket with flames and a stylized dragon on it, thick card stock-like paper, and fully black pages starting Part 1 and Part 2. It was all there for the taking...

...and to an extent, Ness takes it. The rural Washington State setting feels real. Sarah Dewhurst and Jason Inagawa, two misunderstood teenagers who aren't the right race at the right time, develop a palpable emotional connection. FBI agents Dernovich and Woolf, tasked to track Malcolm, have a good rapport for the first hundred pages. Kazimir the blue dragon, named as a "famous destroyer (of peace)", has a bouncier personality than his role as an independently contracted farmhand would suggest. The deal at the start of the book, in which Sarah's father Gareth negotiates Kazimir down to a quarter of the asking price up front because he can't afford the rest, immediately sets off a lightbulb in the reader's head that maybe there aren't a lot of good guys in this world.

The characterization falls apart whenever a character is only required to display a certain stereotype. Deputy Sheriff Kelby is a non-character, needlessly cruel and with no discernible motivation. Miss Archer, the librarian, seems to exist for the purpose of relaying plot-related gossip to the reader. Sarah herself is prophesied* to be present when potentially world-destroying events occur, signaling the presence of religious fanatic-slash**-assassin Malcolm and his newfound lover Nelson. Everyone is misunderstood and finding him- or herself, which I understand is a staple of young adult fiction, but I really wish they'd get on with it.

Ness succeeds with the '50s setting when it captures atmosphere and technology. With the advent of the smartphone rendering entire genres obsolete, writing a period piece is a convenient way to have characters be unable to reach the outside world. The agrarian setting also works in the '50s, given the Cold War uncertainty toward anything farther than house and home. The more Ness leans on these topics, the less on characters' soliloquies on social issues, the better.*** Ness's most incisive comment about his chosen time period comes right at the end of the book, capturing the spirit of Mutually Assured Destruction and the ambient buzz of paranoia that came with it: "All annihilation was mutual in the end." (367)

Similarly, when Ness discusses dragons, he clearly enjoys it, contrasting Russian blue with Canadian red, and dragon-cleared farmland to the interior British Columbia wasteland they call home. However, there are only two dragons with speaking parts in the entirety of Burn. The book has a dragon on the cover, and is ostensibly about dragons. As a reader, I want less chatter amongst the humans, more dealing with dragons. Call this the Snakes on a Plane Effect: when I see a movie called Snakes on a Plane, I want motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane. Similarly, when I read a book called Burn, that has a picture of a dragon on the cover, I want dragons. On the plus side, in a bizarrely academic turn, a dragon-turned-human explains Schrodinger's theory of alternate universes. (202)

Ness pulls off one-liners that keep Burn entertaining. Shortly after Malcolm and Nelson meet, Nelson says the eerie, "A world where you never wake up? Sounds like paradise." (82) This foreshadows the alternate universes existing in Part 1 and Part 2. When Agent Dernovich's daughter Grace notices Malcolm's movements toward the Dewhurst farm, he says to her, "Your eyes, sweetie... I should have them insured, they see so much." (289) Ness is clearly a talented writer, which makes Burn's highs high and its lows all the more head-scratching.

In Part 1, Gareth receives a blackmail letter that Ness never tells us who sends the letter or why, although we can certainly guess. Some questions are never meant to be answered, and some reader itches are never meant to be scratched. I like the lack of knowing; it's scarier that way. The triangle of tension between Sarah, Gareth and Kazimir jolts the story forward, putting our main characters in danger for the first time. That visceral, up-close danger is far scarier than a regular teenager having to save the world for the 34757039509th time. Ness hints at subverting that Hunger Games-esque trope when Kazimir tells Sarah, "What you must remember throughout all of this... is that you are not special", (119) but then she is. Of course she's special. You, reader, are too.

Ease of Reading: 9

Educational Content: 1

*I'm not even bothering to have Burn take the Fantasy Novelist's Exam.

**This is a brilliant pun. When you read far enough into Burn, you will know why.

***At one point, Ness, via the third-person omniscient narrator, teaches the reader the years in which Oregon and Idaho legalized interracial marriage. Burn is not set in either of those states.