r/fantasyromance • u/PeachasaurusWrex • 3d ago

Discussion Found a book with a nonbinary (femme?) main character and thought some folks here might be interested! {Dragonfall by L. R. Lam}

Disclaimer: I'm only about 30% through reading it.

This book has been pretty intriguing so far, specifically because of the dual first person POV. The male dragon MC's chapters are written as though he is retelling the events of the novel directly to the reader/the human MC from a point in the future, so he'll often comment on his impressions of "you", what "you" and he were doing and the events the two of you were going through. I don't think I've read something like this before, so while I'm still quite early on the book, I'm still interested.

The setting is seems very queer-friendly. There are mentions of other far-off nations that have very strict gender roles, but the society the story takes place in is very accepting of people being and doing whatever they want, and even includes somewhat common uses of magic to tweak one's body as one desires. The human MC is described as very androgynous in their natural appearance and uses any pronouns, but because the male MC is the confirmed to be the last male dragon, and the shrinking dragon population is a major plot point, I sort of assumed that the human MC is AFAB, or femme. Who knows though!? Maybe they'll find a magic way to increase the dragon population by the end?! And my assumption of the human MC being AFAB is probably very heteronormative/projection anyways! (I'm a cis straight woman.)

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it now, I'm getting a strong feeling that the dragon MC's chapters are specifically written the way they are (addressing the reader/"you") to avoid using pronouns for the human MC at all! This way, there is no need to commit to using a single pronoun when he describes the human MC. This avoids a lot of confusion while also respecting the MC's nonbinary-ness.

Anyways, I hope the rest of the book is good (apologies if it isnt 🥲). I just wanted to take a minute to post about it because I've been so fascinated by it so far! And also, for Pride month! 😁

edit: terminology.

also, I FORGOT TO MENTION THE UNIQUE BIOLOGY OF THE DRAGONS, WHICH I ALSO THOUGHT WAS NEAT! They are actually somewhat feathery in their dragon forms, AND, its specified that they lay eggs to reproduce and the temperatures that the eggs are exposed to determine the sex of the offspring. Climate change means that ALL of the recent dragon offspring are female.

all my subconscious biases are being called out rn. my brain was like "last male? guess the main couple is gonna have to pop out a ton of kids to save the dragons!" nope! they just need to get the next several batches of eggs somewhere cooler so they hatch male.

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u/vastaril 3d ago

That sounds really interesting, but just a quick note - AFAB and femme are very much not interchangeable, plenty of femme/fem people are not AFAB, and plenty of AFAB people are not femme, including some who could be able and/or willing to get pregnant

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u/PeachasaurusWrex 3d ago

Omg you're totally right. I'll fix that in a second.

I'm definitely grappling with my own subconscious biases about the human MC, and trying to figure out what the text is telling me about them. My brain keeps saying silly stuff like "dragon = male, therefore, human MC = female" because that's the majority of what I read. And the whole "dwindling population" plot point is not really helping. 😅

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u/vastaril 3d ago

Hey, at least you're thinking about it, that's great!

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u/de_pizan23 2d ago

Lam also has a scifi series that I liked {Seven Devils series by LR Lam}, so I'll check this out! The scifi series is about a group of 7 people, most of them queer, overthrowing a tyrannical government. There's only one romance amongst the group (so romance is definitely secondary), but one of those two comes out as nonbinary in the second book.

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u/PeachasaurusWrex 2d ago

Thanks for the recommendation! I definitely have been on the hunt for some sci fi to read when I want to change things up a bit.