My mother died screaming my name.
Isabel Ibañez’s latest Young Adult novel starts just minutes before a tragedy that changes 18-year-old Zarela Zalvidar’s life forever. Her beautiful mother, a talented flamenco dancer, is killed in a terrifying mishap, and Zarela and her arena-fighting father are left to run their family’s arena of La Giralda without her.
A year later and Zarela is still trying to figure out how to make her name as a flamenco dancer herself while living under the shadow of her mother’s fame …when another tragic accident happens. Once the smoke clears Zarela finds that her father will never fight in the arena again, their family reputation is in tatters, and the arena that’s belonged to their family for centuries might be taken away if they can’t bring in an audience again. Zarela knows that no one in the city of Santavilla is going to pay just to watch her dance; if she’s going to save La Giralda she’s going to have to take her father’s place in the arena as a Dragonador.
Which, if you’re wondering, is exactly what it sounds like: think matador, except instead of fighting and killing bulls in the ring, it’s dragons.
Papa once told me that nearly eighty dragons die every year in Santivilla. I used to think it was a high number, but after Mama died, that changed.
Now I think that number will never be high enough.
Fighting dragons is somewhat different from bull fighting; in Hispalia – Ibañez’s fantasy version of medieval Spain – the dragons are predators and pests, occasionally attacking cities and killing travelers. So not too many people have a problem with seeing them getting captured and wing-bound and killed off in front of a cheering audience. But there are echoes of actual bull-fighting here, and as Zarela finds out from her reluctant Dragonador trainer (more on him later), killing a living creature purely for fun and entertainment is problematic. You can understand why there’s an entire organization in Santavilla dedicated to stopping the entire practice of dragon-fighting, and they’re not swayed by the argument “it’s part of our culture!”
Except…it is part of the culture. There’s been centuries of dragon-fighting, an entire industry has grown up around capturing, training, and fighting the dragons, with an entire second industry based around all the useful things that can be made out of everything from the dragons’ scales to their blood. Ibañez does a good job of balancing between the pro and con side, showing how even a little bit of empathy for the dragons makes killing them in the arena tragic and sad, while also demonstrating that a group who’s tactics include death threats and throwing manure isn’t going to make a lot of headway against an art form that’s entwined in almost every level of Hispalian society.
And one of the ways Ibañez really shines is in the beautiful, intricate society she’s created here.
Santavilla at night is one long fiesta – romantic, wild, and unquestionably alive.
Everything in Santavilla is packed with fascinating details, from the gorgeous fans Zarela uses when she dances (hand-painted by her mother), to the usual uniform of a Dragonador, to the steps of a traditional flamenco dance or a Dragonador performance, to all the mouth-watering food that’s offered up in pretty much every chapter. The writing is peppered with Spanish phrases, nothing too challenging for non Spanish-speakers, especially since Ibañez will have the characters respond to a Spanish sentence in English, so you can usually figure out what the first phrase means. (My spotty Duolingo practice means I felt a little smug whenever I could translate on my own.) This is a world with roving dragons and magic (usually in the form of encantos: wands that are broken in half to release a useful spell), but those things are almost secondary to the vibrant, multi-colored setting.
The characters in Zarela’s life are no less vibrant; I loved her touchy relationship with La Giralda’s overbearing cook Ofelia, and my favorite character had to be Zarela’s sassy best friend and partner-in-crime Lola. But of course all of the relationships take a back seat when Zarela meets the roughly handsome dragon hunter Arturo Díaz de Montserrat…who pretty much hates Zarela at first site. And the feeling is mutual.
Which is unfortunate, since Arturo is Zarela’s only option when it comes to finding anyone to train her to fight dragons.
Somehow, I’m meant to kill one in the arena, a feat that feels similar to traveling to the sun on horseback. I may as well marinate in olive oil and present myself to the dragon with my compliments.
Zarela is a strong-willed, resourceful, resilient character who I think a lot of young-adult readers will identify with. She’s just at that age where she’s starting to realize the people she loves don’t always make the best choices, but she’s not old enough to actually make them listen all of the time. It’s frustrating to have to convince the grownups that you’re right when you can’t even convince them you’re allowed to be part of the debate in the first place. Especially when what Zarela can’t get them to see is that someone is actively working to destroy her father and La Giralda, and whoever it is doesn’t have any problem with letting the citizens of Santavilla die in the crossfire.
I think the two things that impress me the most about Zarela is how she just decides something needs to be done, and then does it. Marching into Gremio de Dragonadores to face down the people who want to shut down La Giralda and blame the whole thing on her? Fine. Start her own investigation to find out who’s trying to destroy her family? Done, next? Convince a stubborn dragon tamer that he will work for her no matter how much he dislikes her and everything about Dragonadores in general? No problem, she’ll stand outside his house in the rain until he gives in out of sheer annoyance.
The second thing that impresses me about Zarela would be how she handles her very steamy relationship with Arturo. This is a romantic young adult fantasy, after all. I’m sure everyone who hears that the two of them hated each other on first site will have figured out that they’ll be passionately in love by the last few chapters. It’s a standard trope, but Ibañez makes it work, having the two of them circle each other like fighters in a ring, who gradually turn into partners in a dance.
In fact if there’s one thing you could do to prepare for reading this book it would be to look up some videos of traditional Spanish flamenco dancers. This book has a lot of desire and betrayal, some pretty shocking violence (no actual gore, but there is always a high body count when a dragon attacks), and moments of humor that actually made me laugh (like Arturo stomping off to go talk to Ofelia, then having to stomp back and ask where he can find Ofelia). But the parts that I found delightfully surprising was how well Ibañez conveys the scenes of dancing, with all the precise control required in an art form that feels like pure uncontrolled passion, and all the unexpected ways she transformed the steps of a dragonfight into a dance.
There’s a lovely illustration for this book on Ibañez’s website here.