This is a gorgeous novella with some absolutely exquisite world building (but that doesn't dominate the story) that leans heavily into issues of identity and belonging. Read it over the space of a week or so, and definitely highly recommended.

I'm so sorry it took nearly a year to review this e-arc requested from Netgalley. I had it on my kindle and got swamped with other books and every time I looked at the title I thought, oh, it's that middlegrade I requested. AHEM. Not middlegrade. Lol.

It's short but it still took me a while to read, and it's definitely a book where time is a very present character in a coming of age story. Overall I liked it but wished the mc had been able to do more magic, or effect the things happening to them rather than just sit back and watch. Their story, to me, didn't feel like the most important part of the arc and I was kind of held at a distance from exploring a world I really wanted to. I almost feel like Alice would have been a more interesting POV character since she actually had to make choices.

Overall a decent read though, and I'd tentatively recommend it to those who don't mind a slower paced, character driven novella.

‘The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar’ by Indra Das is a novella about a magical world that may exist in a very small part of the world.

Ru lives in Calcutta, but is different, or so his classmates tell him. His parents tell him they are descended from nomads, but he dreams it a bit differently. The dreams may actually hold some truth. His parents feed him a tea of forgetfulness to help stop the dreams. His friend Alice starts to realize that Ru may be more than he seems.

I enjoyed the writing of this book more than the book itself. The story was interesting, but I kept drifting while reading it. That’s never a good sign, but I would read other works by this same author.

Indra Das's novel The Devourers was such a fascinating, original take on werewolves, and I was pumped to see a new release by him. I gave this nearly 70% though and couldn't force myself to read further. There's nothing wrong with the novella, I was just bored and could never connect with Ru.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A coming-of-age novella with dragons... what's not to love? I found it to be quite charming, with a notable infusion of heart. The title and cover were particularly effective in piquing my interest, and overall, I enjoyed it. I'd definitely recommend it.

3.25

This is a stunning novella full of lyrical prose and a melancholic story. Ru is a boy from nowhere, growing up in Calcutta in the 1990s and we follow his coming of age story and his memories of his family and his friend Alice. I don’t want to say much more because this is really short, and truly the plot is secondary to the atmosphere and the themes.

I think this is definitely a story that needs to be reread and savored to fully appreciate it, but I would be very interested in reading more from Indra Das. I loved the prose and the emotions and the ideas of dragons and multiverses and I would love to see more in this world and what else Das can create.

Well, this book has an appeal, just not for me. It felt too telling rather than showing. The attempt to combine modern nowadays setting and mythical lore that intertwined directly with the family didn’t fit too well. So yeah.

Enjoyed this novella from Indra Das (first time reading him). I enjoyed the characters, and the story/pacing. Will definitely need to read more from him. #TheLastDragonersofBowbazar #NetGalley

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It was exciting enough to keep me enthralled, but not too much to overhwlem and distract from other aspects of the book. The writing style also flowed very nicely, creating a pleasing reading experience.

5 stars, a beautiful novella about identity and where you fit into the world

I've been eagerly awaiting Indra Das's next book since his 2015 The Devourers became one of my favorite reads of that year. Luckily, this newest novella does not disappoint in any way. It is a mesmerizing and gorgeously written story of Ru who is the descendant of dragoners from another world. Ru grows up anxious and a bit of an outcast who struggles to fit in but finds solace in his friend Alice, in learning about his heritage, and in the fantasy fiction that comes closest to matching his feelings and heritage. In this way, Last Dragoners is a book that occupies similar ground to Jo Walton's Among Others but in that book I often felt just a bit of pandering in the endless lists of great books the main character read where Last Dragoners does a slightly better job truly selling Ru as needing to escape to fantasy more than just needing to list off good books.

If I have any critique of the novella, it's that dragons are almost completely absent from it except in a few key moments which is a bit of a disappointment but hardly enough to hold against the novel. I get that dragons function as a symbol of the world Ru wants to belong to more than as creatures within the story which is a smart choice for the book and works well at keeping the mystery of what dragons are like alive until the final pages.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves beautiful prose, coming of age stories, and is interested in themes of identity and belonging. I once again eagerly await what Das will write next and hope that I won't have to wait another 8 years but also won't be mad about having to do so if the next book is just as good.

This is a beautifully written coming of age story. Sadly, I also thought it was boring. Luckily, it was short.

A poignant tale of feeling adrift in your identity with sick dragon metaphors. This was much more reflective and character-driven than I expected, centering around the coming-of-age of our narrator, Ru. As an Indian-origin immigrant myself, I connected a lot with the themes and the setting, but wished for more development with relationships. I also wanted more dragons! The world Das hinted at was so intriguing but was hardly explored! Overall this was too short for me to get truly invested but it does hit hard emotionally, especially if you go in looking for more of an exploration of identity than an adventure.

I love this story. A coming of age story done well. A unique spin on dragons. I love the book references. I wish it was long or turned into a series. I also like how it incorporates the idea of culture. @SubPress

I'm simultaneously in awe and unspeakably jealous that I didn't write this. In fact, the premise is a beautiful amalgamation of the primary elements of at least two of my works in progress. It's not a secret that I go bananas for good depiction of my hometown of Calcutta and my native Bengali culture. But oh this is SO MUCH more! This is if Neil Gaiman was Bengal and set Ocean of the End of the Lane in Calcutta. But make it dragons and alien species of dragonriders, for that uniquely immigrant, postcolonial, queer, and coming of age narrative flavor. The writing is just so gorgeous and I almost got homesick at how effortlessly the author places this story of being an Other in the unique vibe of the city, without getting overindulgent. My only complaint would be some elements that seem to get raised but not adequately addressed, but the whole ride was kinda in this snoozy dreamspace that I don't even care by the end. I'll have to finally get around to reading the author's debit novel that's been on my TBR forever.

This novella is not something of my typically tastes. The slow pace is something I personally need to be in a specific mental headspace for. The plot was interesting but what kept me was Indra’s writing style. The style is beautiful and intricate. I believe I would have appreciated this more had I not been reading another epic series tandem. This will definitely be a re read when I am mentally in a place where I know I can appreciate the plot more.

I received an arc of this book for an honest review, here are my thoughts:

I enjoyed this so thoroughly I bought the preorder edition on page 65/120. The story follows a boy as he comes of age and discovers himself. He struggles to fit into his culture, which is shrouded in mystery and not of this earth. The prose is lyrical and ethereal, weaving a world that feels to be just beyond my fingertips. I felt homesick for the impossible experiences and memories our narrator has, and am so jealous I cannot be a dragoner. Without the magic and dragons, this book still has legs to stand on and discusses culture, family, and identity. I was especially touched with the casualness of positive non binary/trans representation in our narrators grandfather (and larger culture) and the queer rep in Alice. This book is short but packs a beautiful and reflective tale, I highly recommend it.

The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar is a coming-of-age story set in Calcutta, India, about a boy raised in a most intriguing family. Ru’s parents and grandmother are nomads who have a close relationship with dragons, which are real to them. Although they try to teach Ru about their culture, they often ply him with the Tea of Forgetfulness to avoid steeping him too much in their beliefs. It’s an interesting story, relayed in just a few pages, as this is a novella. And although it’s slow paced, the prose easily draws you in.

Of course, the prose is what I liked and admired the most, and also what I paid the most attention to as I read. I thought the story was OK, but I wasn’t that interested in it. The protagonist didn’t appeal to me, and the quiet nature of the story didn’t excite me either. So what kept me reading was my admiration of Das’s writing. Actually, I don’t think I paid close attention to the plot until about close to the end, which was bitter-sweet for me and left me feeling sad.

Other things I liked include the story’s focus on a person torn between two worlds, as Ru is pulled between this world (our world) and that of his parents’, which he learns about from their stories and what they teach him — what lingers after the effects of the Tea of Forgetfulness. But Ru is also treated as an outsider by almost everyone except his best friend, his neighbor Alice, because of how he looks and that he’s unable to say where exactly he’s from. In this way, I think readers who’ve ever felt displaced could relate to some of Ru’s struggles.

The dragons were interesting as well and were presented in a new way to me. Not so much the large, talking, fiery beasts we usually get in fantasy. Instead, they are almost spiritual beings in Das’s book, but not exactly that either. I guess I think of them as spiritual since, to me, it seems that Ru’s family connect to them in a spiritual sense, on a spiritual level. I liked that. They seem to have a symbiotic relationship with the dragons: caring for them and in turn being cared by them — even being able to eat of the dragons.

OVERALL: ★★☆☆☆ ½

Although my rating is somewhat low, I would recommend the story. I rate based on enjoyment, and although I liked parts of this and admire the writing, I didn’t enjoy reading it so much to rate it higher.

Another absolute winner from Indra Das. I have been a huge fan of his since the Devourers, and the Last Dragoners didn't disappoint. Absolutely breathtaking writing, characterization and plotting.

Those who know me may know that I have long been a fan of Indra Das, whose debut novel "The Devourers" is always my go-to recommendation when the “what should I read?” question is posed. As such, when I heard that Das was releasing a new book, "The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar," I jumped at the chance to read it.

As a fan of Das’s work and as someone who has grown up on fantasy and speculative fiction, my first response after completing this book was that it was almost nothing like what I expected—but that’s not a bad thing!

This book lives in a state of ambiguity and discomfort. The way Das uses first person through the construct of the narrator writing the reader a story draws us into the experience of being unmoored. It’s an experience the narrator must live in multiple ways. Ru has, it seems, no homeland, no past, and no solid definition of “self” in the way that the society around him expects him to have. Das does an excellent job of tackling the emotional turmoil this causes while also keeping a bit of playfulness one might expect from a coming of age story. Furthermore, I was thrilled to see that Das kept true to the commentary put forth at the book’s start: that it is the world around us that imposes labels upon our identities and that it is both difficult and freeing to live without them.

I admit, the subject matter and commentary offered in the book is not why I found it unexpected. That, I will attribute to the plot and pacing. There is an ever-present sense of preparation throughout this story. A sense that something is yet to be unveiled and a journey is about to begin. Perhaps that feeling stems from my own bias and the sort of genre stereotyping that says coming of age + dragon = grand quest. Regardless, I believe if I had been tied to that idea, that a fantasy story with a dragon must result in some grand quest, I would have been disappointed.

Rest assured, I was not.

Once I was able to shove those thoughts out of my head and go along with the soft, introspective, and almost surreal flow of the story that Das has created, everything fell into place. "The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar" is an experience, and not one I’ll soon forget. Das again shows his mastery of language, like in his previous work, and the characters are both relatable and enigmatic. The book, overall, is one that opens the door to a new world but refuses to shove its characters through until they are ready. The story allows us to grow, to understand slowly with Ru and Alice in a way that makes every milestone, every loss, and every joy all the more powerful. While this book does seem to set up the possibility of a “grand quest” in the future—and, while I would be thrilled to read more of this world Das has built, or woven, onto the familiar roads of Calcutta—the story itself feels complete.

Simply put, "The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar" leads the reader on a journey of a different kind, one of doubt, loneliness, love, and hope for a world of true impossibility.

The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar is a novella by Indian science fiction/fantasy author Indra Das and marks a return for him to long fiction after his debut 2016 novel "The Devourers". The Devourers was a masterpiece, a queer fantasy horror/historical fiction novel (although I don't think those genre classifications are necessarily adequate) that dealt ostensibly with shapehshifters/werewolves in modern day and 17th century history and questions of identity, love and transformation (using serious and often brutal themes like rape here). So it was with great anticipation that I requested this second piece of long fiction (Das has written plenty of short fiction since The Devourers) from NetGalley as soon as it was posted up there.

And as expected, The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar is a fascinating novella, that itself defies classification, and is really interesting. The story follows a boy Reuel, as he grows up in a family that seems to come from nowhere, who makes him constantly a tea that forces him to forget whenever he learns something about their true history, and yet still he has glimpses of memories of his family dealing with the impossible - dragons and dragonflesh. Its the story of a child of immigrants from another world who want that child to grow up in this world, rather than their own one, and the struggles that child feels when his family can't escape their feelings and memories towards that old world and can't quite understand at the same time this own new one. And it's the story about faith and memory and believing, and keeping history alive, told in beautiful fascinating prose, and I think it really works.



Quick Plot Summary: Reuel grows up in Calcutta along with his family - a family full of people who claim to have no history, and come from nowhere, and thus can't be easily classified. To the kids at his elementary school Reuel appears like he might be Chinese, but he is not, even if his family's premises abut the Chen Family's Chinese Restaurant. But Reuel has always wondered who his family was, and has occasional memory fragments of times in his past when they told him and showed him, stories of being from another world and caring for and dealing with dragons - impossible creatures that couldn't exist. Yet Reuel's family makes sure that he drinks the Tea of Forgetfulness, preventing any of these memories from taking root.

And so Reuel grows up, first all alone, and then alongside the Chen's daughter Alice, who takes an interest in this boy with the mysterious past, the boy who looks like a girl and doesn't mind that, the boy whose family wishes for him to be a part of this world even as they find themselves unable to let go of their own ties to their old ones....

Thoughts: This novella doesn't have a plot arc per se - which is why that plot summary above doesn't really promise one. Instead the story jumps back and forth in time, with it largely telling the story of Reuel's growing up amidst his family, and his growing friendship with Alice, all the while interspersing its narrative (itself not fully linear) with Reuel's memories of his family and dragons (memories that he has been made to forget). It's a fascinating novella, written with really great descriptive prose, as it metaphorically and directly tells the story of a child of immigrants (Reuel) whose family wants him to be a child of his new country even without any understanding of how to pull that off or what that means (it isn't helped by them essentially being illegal immigrants without papers). Reuel struggles because without a family putting the current world into context, and without himself able to put his relation to the new world into context, he can't really fit in with other people his age in this new place. And yet at the same time, he can't help but feel ties to the old place, a place he has never known, which in his case is this fantastical parallel land his family fled along with dragons, even despite his family's attempts to keep that place from him. Indeed, in the end, Das posits that Reuel will keep that old world alive in this new place by taking up his family's beliefs in dragons, by taking up their spirits and cultures, and it is in that connection where he finds something happy to finally share with someone else.

I'm seizing here only upon one theme by the way, as there's other stuff Das is doing here which works real, for example - this a story that is very queer (Reuel's family features a trans grandparent and adheres not at all to the gender binary, while Alice, Reuel's friend, is Bi and possibly queer herself as she finds Reuel's girl-like features to be fascinating) and its queerness is a prominent feature and theme I didn't get into above. Really recommended for you to check out, and a successful return to long fiction for Das.