A Dragonling’s Family, a sweet tale of family, love, and the power of open minds from L. Rowyn.

It is adorable and I loved it.

It was his friend’s dying wish for Vaiyae to adopt and raise her offspring.
But the child’s uncle has other ideas.

The premise of an adoptive father sued for custody by his daughter’s blood relatives despite her birth mother’s clear desire the child be protected from rather than given to them would be cause for drama in any world. But in this world, the doting father is an elven shapeshifter and his child is a dragon.

The dilemma:
Even if Vaiyae can maintain legal custody,
is that what’s best for the child?

Things would seem clear-cut enough if all of Vaiye’s late friend’s relatives were awful. But her brother, Zyek, exiled himself years before the family disowned her, after he took a stance against the dragons’ caste system and the violence in their society. Zyek only now learned of his sister’s exile, hearing of her death and that she left an egg behind on the same trip to find her. Once Vaiyae realizes he may be ill-equipped to keep his daughter safe as she learns to be a dragon, it’s easy to understand why he grows concerned that keeping her may not be in her best interest. Particularly as he starts to suspect Zyek isn’t the monstrous brute he first appeared to be. In fact, Zyek may even be someone Vaiyae himself could grow to care about. A lot. Vaiyae knows he can provide his child with a lifetime of love, but could handing her into Zyek’s care be what she truly needs to thrive?

Love in Many Forms

To me, the love that stood out the most in this novel was the love the adult characters all held for the dear, precocious, little dragonling. Vaiye adores her from hatching. The crows who live with him consider her flock from the start. Daneah, the friend and initial love interest of Vaiye, is charmed as soon as they meet, with her sign-language translating raccoon familiar stepping out of his standard grumpiness to dote on the youngling. Uncle Zeke loves his niece from the moment he knows she exists. And most of the city seems to think she is one of the most loveable residents they have, despite the fact she required an exemption to the law preventing dragons from living there.

But this is also a romance. A polyamorous one. Our romantic leads are an elf-crow shifter, a human witch, and a dragon capable of shifting into something vaguely elven. None of them come from a culture that widely practices polyamory, but they’re all at least passingly familiar with gnome culture, and gnomes are commonly polyamorous in this world. The acceptance of this as a possible relationship structure is thereby hastened by everyone expressing a general sentiment that maybe the gnomes are onto something. As in the previous L. Rowyn books I’ve mentioned here, the story has one couple establishing themselves somewhat before adding a third to the relationship, but there’s no indication that anyone fails to see the last member to join the group as in any way unequal. Once again, the communication skills on display are top notch and we’re shown a terrific example of healthy polyamory.

The romantic arcs are intertwined with each other, as well as with the arcs concerning the titular dragonling. As that second bit somewhat indicates, they are based on concepts of respect and appreciation rather than limited to physical attraction. Likewise, expressions of affection include sex but rely largely on the characters showing support of one another. Basically, they seem healthy, well-rounded, and realistic.

Representation galore!

We’ve already established this book contains positive polyamorous and adoption rep. But what else is going on?

When a multi-gendered triad forms, there’s typically going to be some amount of bi/pan representation involved, and we see that here as both men involved are very much into each other as well as the woman they’re with. Her sexuality is less clear, although she refers to dating “people” rather than using a gendered word.

Each character also brings a unique-in-the-story positive representation with them.

Vaiye is trans. The reader learns this detail about him when he meets his first love interest due to her taking over for the witch providing his gender-affirmation care. It’s not irrelevant to him or his life, but it’s also not his defining characteristic. It’s actually pretty far down on the list of things I found interesting about him.

Daneah is hard of hearing. This has an impact on her life, but it’s not what she stands out for. We are shown some hardship arising from it, such as when the people testing her for the license she requires to practice witchcraft in her new city don’t want to allow her translator in, but we’re never made to feel sorry for her over it. It’s simply an aspect of who she is, and it blends into the rest of her character without overshadowing the rest of her.

Zyek, meanwhile, has a genetic disability. It’s hard to make a direct parallel to a specific human condition as his condition involves his fire organ being insufficiently insulated from his lungs. Not only does that make it highly painful to breathe fire, but it’s dangerous. It is, in fact, what triggered the cancer his sister died of. A dragon who can’t breathe fire isn’t going to be respected in the toxic culture of their society, but it’s not what made him an outcast. It’s also not something that particularly limited him once he stepped out of mainstream dragon society. So, once again, it’s an important part of who he is but isn’t how he is defined.

In conclusion
Read this book if you…

1. Enjoy adorable baby dragons.
2. Believe in challenging assumptions.
3. Are happy when characters communicate.
4. Don’t think your differences need to define you.
5. Accept that a person can truly love more than one other person.
6. Like happy endings.
7. Wish to support independent LGBTQ+ fiction.

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Links to assorted booksellers can be found here (https://books2read.com/dragonling)

Need to see content warnings?

Those can be found on the author’s website.

Note: A Whole New World

Some of L. Rowyn’s earlier books also featured dragons. However, the dragons on this world are slightly different. Notably, it is a plot point in The Princess, Her Dragon, And Their Prince that dragons only have two forms: their dragon shape and one other they select. The dragon MC is unusual for picking a humanoid second form as the majority of dragons pick… A dragon. Just bigger than their primary body. Not very inspired, but understandable in a culture that overvalues might.

Meanwhile, in the world of A Dragonling’s Family, dragons still overvalue physical power but have an ability to take multiple forms and sizes. One of the world building tidbits I most enjoyed was a game dragons play with their young involving who can take the smallest form. It’s also established that there’s some amount of skill involved in shape mimicking. Our dragon MC is apparently quite passable as a bat, but no one seeing his elven shape would mistake him for an actual elf. This is partially by design because he wants to retain some of his dragon-ness as an elf, whereas he uses the bat form primarily to spy. Of course, even if he looked just like an elf, there could still be behavioral tells. His attempts at portraying himself as a crow were simply hilarious.