Review: Burn

Burn by Patrick Ness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I guess I'd just missed that Patrick Ness came out with another book? At least I got to pick it up as one of the first reads I found at the library in my new hometown in Oregon, a town not too dissimilar to the fictional setting of this book in Frome, WA. Rooted in an alternate 1957 - Eisenhower is still president, and the book begins on the day of his second inauguration no less - Ness clearly takes a lot of inspiration from E.K. Johnston's most underrated Story of Owen duology, with the heavy emphasis on dragons having their own territory in Canada, as well as Russia. The Cold War setting informs this book very well with the dual threats of not only nuclear war, but dragon war as well. Being set in 1957 also helps Ness emphasize the ongoing issue of racism as a mirror against our present day, with Sarah as a biracial protagonist (Black mom, white dad) feeling a lack of belonging in both communities, and her best friend Jason, being Japanese-American (he has to repeatedly mention that he was born in Tacoma), was sent to Minidoka internment camp as a baby. Then there's the parallel storyline (a feature Ness has used before, but now to its best level yet - unlike the deliberate detachment of the "indie kids" chapter headers in The Rest of Us Just Live Here or the weird juxtaposition of real issues and magical shenanigans in Release, Ness now has the parallel storylines so closely entwined that building a single book around them is entirely justified) about a guy named Malcolm on a religious pilgrimage of sorts from a dragon-worshipping cult in Canada, taking rides across the border (and trying to fend off strange advances from too many men, while there's one guy in particular with whom he's fallen head over heels in love.) Though Ness has always been a real hit-or-miss writer for me, I'm happy to say that this one's a hit - though a heavy hit at that, for a lot of the reasons outlined above. Consider yourselves warned.

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