I have to admit that part of why I had such mixed feelings towards Burn was that it was one of my most anticipated reads of 2020. Ness has such a unique take on storytelling and injects a lot of creativity into his books. He did show some of his brilliance with his insightfulness into the human condition but I didn’t think that was enough to carry the rest of the book into four, let alone five stars from me. It's very much the 50s we know, including the racism, but it has dragons it. Somehow this never feels shoehorned in, it just works seamlessly. We have a full cast of diverse characters, the farm girl, her Japanese boyfriend, the gay assassin coming to kill her, the detectives following the assassin, the giant blue dragon I kinda want to marry? Is that weird? Let me start this review with saying that this is a total and absolute case of "it's me and not the book". I think that this book does a lot of things right and I'm pretty sure that someone who's not me can find this their favorite book. Most of all because the plot is quite nice AND most of all really well done. There is a very clear goal from the start and along the way more and more questions are answered and more and more pieces of the puzzle revealed. Burn’ is one of those books where I think it’s best to go into it knowing as little as possible. It’s set in an alternate 1950s America during the Cold War and Sarah Dewhurst’s father has just hired a dragon to help on their farm. The Dragon has motives other than the money he will be paid though, Sarah is mentioned in a prophecy that could mean the end of the world.

Burn by Patrick Ness | Goodreads

And another thing I strongly did not like was the ending. I thought it was cheap and just too easy. The fact that Sarah stayed in the parallel universe and all the deaths that happened on Earth #1 got reversed made me mad. Literally every single dead person got resurrected and she got to re-start a new perfect life – nah, fam, I’m not about that life. The use of the resurrection trope bothered me to no end and I simply could not get on board with all that.

On a cold Sunday evening in early 1957, 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... It was dealing with racism and homophobia and police brutality and prophecies and dragons and multiple universes and war and grief and religion and faith and cults and love and family and godhood and destruction of the world(s) and myths and political intrigues and goddammit mate, is this list ever gonna end? This novel has film-like qualities: the skies are big, the plot twists and turns and the action is both hard-hitting and quite astonishing. There is an emotional balance, however, as the teenagers begin relationships and experience grief as well as first love; the pain, confusion and bewilderment Sarah comes to experience will strike a chord with readers who themselves have lived through painful times. By the end the reader is left with the feeling that they have experienced something quite vast and somewhat indescribable. It is superb (as is the audio book) and will be an excellent addition to a secondary reader’s bookshelf. I’ve written nine books: 2 novels for adults ( The Crash of Hennington and The Crane Wife), 1 short story collection for adults ( Topics About Which I Know Nothing) and 10 novels for young adults ( The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men, A Monster Calls, More Than This, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Release, And the Ocean Was Our Sky, Burn and Different for Boys).

Patrick Ness » Burn

I think this book could have worked with a higher word count. More time to establish the world-building, more space for the characters to develop, more room for the story to breathe and settle. Because this was one wild ride and I believe it might have given me a concussion. This is a cat and mouse chase like no other. Who has been misled and who is really trying to stop a war whether that be between men or men and dragons?

Where Expectations Met Reality

Kazimir the dragon is a small Russian Blue, not many are seen and certainly not working on a farm. The book might be set in a fantasy world but the racism and bigotry of the 50s are certainly present and the locals don’t like a Blue being close by, he could be a Russian spy. The local police officer already doesn’t like the family as Sarah is of mixed race. He also has an issue with her best friend Jason who is of Japanese descent. Sometimes you just have to feel bad about a thing. Sometimes that's the only thing that makes you human. It is also just an incredible story with twists that I didn't see coming at all. Yeah, there's nothing more to say except I never wanted to put this book down and now I love it, the end. Okay I know this sounds completely bonkers, and it is, but in the best possible way. I promise it all makes sense when you read it! It isn't just weird for the sake of weirdness or anything. The world building is fabulous, and every single bit of what goes down is thought provoking and full of very timely and applicable messages.