To Shape a Dragon's Breath

The remote island of Masquapaug has not seen a dragon in generations—until fifteen-year-old Anequs finds an egg and bonds with the hatchling, Kasaqua. To her Indigenous community it is a wonder and a return; to the colonial Anglish government that rules the land, it is a problem to be managed. Anequs is compelled to train at Kuiper's Academy of Natural Philosophy and Skiltakraft, far from home, under Anglish rules that treat her people and her dragon as inferior—and if she fails their standards, Kasaqua will be killed.

Set in an alternate industrial-age world whose colonizers descend from Norse settlers, Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape a Dragon's Breath is a sharp, warm, anticolonial fantasy about culture, sovereignty, and the quiet defiance of holding onto who you are. Winner of the Nebula and Lodestar Awards, it is the first book of Nampeshiweisit.