I read Seraphina

This week's novel is Seraphina by Rachel Hartman.  This one has been on my to-read list for quite a while, and I feel remiss now for not getting to it sooner.

Seraphina is assistant to the sickly court composer, meaning she's doing the court composer's job of giving the princess harpsichord lessons, rehearsing the choir, planning the huge state celebrations for when the leader of the dragons visits to celebrate 40 years of peace, and planning the prince's sudden funeral when they find his body decapitated (probably bitten off by a dragon).  Her father has long wanted her to keep a low profile and never play music in public in order to protect her terrible secret, but staying out of the way becomes hard when she makes friends with the princess, draws the prince's attention with he knowledge of dragon behavior and protocol, and gets swept up in stopping a conspiracy to end the uneasy peace.

This book dealt with several themes I've been exploring lately in my own writing, so this was a blast to read.  Hartman conveys the alienness of dragons quickly and organically.  Dragons can take human shape, but they pride themselves on logical thinking, and if a dragon shows too much emotion, the dragon censors show up and give them a lobotomy.  It's a mixture of them being mentally unable to express emotion and culturally dissuaded from expressing emotion, so they're very bad at it.  Their oddness and inhuman natures were shown in the beginning through dragons walking away when they have nothing else to contribute or gain from a conversation, not saying greetings but jumping straight to the point, and in referring to child Seraphina as "it."  These little tricks are expertly deployed and work well from a world-building standpoint.

I've also been interested lately in people who professionally plan and preform music selections, and this fit right in with that.  I've been interested lately in cantors and church music for a story idea, and it was neat to see how the court music program in a fictional world aligned with that.  It felt real in that most of Seraphina's job was on the frustrating planning side instead of the losing-yourself-in-beautful-music side.  There's a moment at the beginning when the scheduled performer breaks a reed and doesn't have a backup reed and the backup performer is sick and Seraphina has to step up and sightread the piece.  The part that sticks with me though is a scene right after this, where she's explaining why she had to play and the scheduled performer says, "I did not lose my backup reed.  I found it after the show."  And I was hooked, because I get this tertiary character, and I get what Seraphina has to deal with on a day to day basis.

Aside from pinging with me on these very specific levels, the story also clipped along, the flirting was good, and it focused on a chipper, smaller story with daunting stakes lurking just beneath the surface.

***
Next week: Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina by Rachel Hartman