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Reviewed by: Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier April Spisak Lucier, Makiia Dragonfruit. Clarion, 2024 368p Trade ed. ISBN 9780358272106 19. 99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780358272045 9. 99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-10 Years ago, when a rejected suitor attempted to poison the royal family of the island kingdom of Tamarind, Princess Oliana and her young page Hanalei fell into a deep slumber. A seadragon's egg was rumored to be the only thing to save the princess, but Hanalei's father stole it before it could reach Oliana, giving it to Hanalei to save her and thus exiling both himself and his daughter from the kingdom. Hanalei spent the next several years scrambling to survive alone after his death, all the while studying the rare and dazzling seadragons in search of another (even rarer) egg, so that she can return what her father stole. Prince Samathi, son of Oliana and childhood friend to Hanalei, has grown up without his mother, and in this matriarchal society, with Sam's grandmother ready to hand off the crown, Sam is at a point where he either needs a wife or a cure for his mother, so his pursuit of a seadragon egg has become even more desperate. Both Hanalei and Sam are happy to have found one another again, and they share a common goal: find an egg before anyone else does, use it, and gain Hanalei redemption and Sam his mother back. There's a timelessness to this story that feels drawn from mythology, and as with any good mythological End Page 328 item, destroying the seadragon egg is complicated—it will give you what you seek, but only with a steep cost. Fantasy fans will likely be enthralled by the seadragons, a relative rarity in dragondom, and Lucier describes them with reverential details. Hanalei is tough and scrappy, Sam is clever and willing to listen to the women all around him, the villains are complex enough to make them more than pure foils, and the seadragons themselves are rad—there's a lot to enjoy here. Copyright © 2024 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
April Spisak (Thu,) studied this question.