Goodman, Alison: Eon
Eon (2008)
Written by: Alison Goodman
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Pages: 576 (Trade Paperback)
Series: Book One
Why I Read It: Ever since reading Alison Goodman's Singing the Dogstar Blues, I've had my eye on the author. I've always wanted to pick this up, but the length was a wee bit intimidating and I always had so many other things to read. However, readers voted it as the clear favorite for September's Theme Park pick, so it was no hardship to read this. And as it turns out, there's plenty in here for discussion, so let's get to it!
The premise: ganked from Goodreads: Eon has been studying the ancient art of Dragon Magic for four years, hoping he'll be able to apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune. But he also has a dark secret. He is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been living a dangerous lie for the chance to become a Dragon-eye, the human link to an energy dragon's power. It is forbidden for females to practice the Dragon Magic and, if discovered, Eon faces a terrible death. After a dazzling sword ceremony, Eon's affinity with the twelve dragons catapults him into the treacherous world of the Imperial court, where he makes a powerful enemy, Lord Ido. As tension builds and Eon's desperate lie comes to light, readers won't be able to stop turning the pages…
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. As with all book club selections, there will be spoilers, so if you're trying to avoid them, just skip to "My Rating" and you'll be in good shape. Everyone else, onward!
This was an interesting read for me for a few reasons, but I don't want to get into too much plot detail because the book is RICH with discussion points and I'd rather throw those out and let you guys run with them. I will say that this was an interesting read because every time I'd pick up the book, I'd be rather ambivalent, already tired of the "girl disguised as boy to get something" conceit that pops up so often in fantasy, but inevitably, while reading, I'd get sucked in and come up for air a hundred pages later. So the book is, no doubt, engaging. But right from the start, I knew Eon's bad hip was going to be healed. For starters, I'm more aware of disability politics than I used to be, and that whole storyline strikes as something that would piss off a reader who has a disability of their own. And yet there's so many ways to look at that one issue, let alone how one interprets the book as a whole. Do you take a gender studies' interpretation, and perhaps get pissed because Eon wasn't whole until she shed her more comfortable, masculine identity and became Eona? Do you take a feminist read and question what femininity means in this book, in which case your answer determines if you get pissed by the end or not? This book is simply ripe for discussion, so I'll throw out what very little I have to offer, and then leave the rest of the discussion for you:
As I mentioned, a girl dressing up as a boy is nothing new in fantasy. In fact, it's become a tired convention. Whether the girl wants to be a boy or simply is passing as a boy in order to survive, fantasy readers see it over and over. I will say I was quite impressed by how well Goodman captured Eon's first person narration. I never read Eon's pages as a girl acting like a boy. I read Eon as a boy, who occasionally reminded me that he was actually a she. For me, this was done remarkably well, especially in comparison to Lady Dela, who might be seen by some as simply a cross-dresser, but Goodman provided what appeared to be an elegant and interesting identity: a body with both male and female souls. So Lady Dela was what she wanted to be, and I rarely had trouble seeing her as female, despite learning that her body, at least, was male. It was wonderful support to the question of Eon. Was Eon male as a matter of survival? Was Eon male because that came more naturally than female? Was it all of it? I'd say so. But I loved how I wasn't reading Eon's narration and listening to a whimpering teenage girl go gaga over fashion and falling in love with the Emperor's Son. In lesser writers' hands, that's what we would've gotten, a character who only played at being a boy, but was really a girl. Instead, Eon is fully male in every way that matters, the body's just female. And any trappings of Eona have been systematically erased in order for Eon to exist. I will say that I did like the message in one regard: in order to be whole, one must accept who you are, and that includes EVERYTHING that you are. After all, when Eon was suppressing Eona, he sickened, he didn't think straight, he did the wrong things.
And funny how easy it is to refer to Eon as "he." Because it really did read as "he" even though I knew, physically, Eon was female. Which makes me quite interested in reading Eona, to see if that perspective changes now that Eon has accepted the full strength of the power granted to him, by accepting Eona and all the femininity that comes with that. I also suspect and fear that Eona will, actually, end up falling in love with the Pearl Emperor, but we'll see.
It's tempting, in some ways, to read this as an empowering feminist text: that women can accomplish just as much, if not MORE, than men, but only when they accept who and what they really are instead of pretending to be male (either literally or metaphorically). The question was raised with starmetal_oak about Eona's swords: they were infused with rage, and when she fought with them, her disability suddenly didn't matter: she became a fantastic fighter. The question was this: were the swords themselves magic or was the Mirror Dragon magic part of the swords? I ask because one implies that a woman can't be a good fighter in her own right, that she can't beat a man in a fight without magic swords. The other, and yes, I realize this is partially semantics, is that if the swords were imbued with the Mirror Dragon power, only one person was meant to access those skills. After all, others who used the swords didn't notice anything different; the swords didn't make those others better fighters all of a sudden, right?
But this question of magic as a cure is a tricky one. Whether it relates to skills or actual healing, it's just ripe for controversy. After all, once Eona accepts who she is and therefore accepts the Mirror Dragon (accepts her femininity and comes into her power), her injury is gone as if it were never there. One could argue that her injury, that her disability, was a metaphor for deceit: that as long as Eona pretended to be Eon, she would never be able to reach her full potential. But for any reader whose disability isn't a metaphor, whose disability can't be magically healed, for someone who believes they are a full and whole person despite the disability, this turn of events is insulting.
And what about from a gender studies POV? I'm not an expert on this, not in the slightest, but for those in the transgendered community, was it disheartening to read this and learn that Eon/Eona couldn't realize come into full power without choosing one specific gender? Obviously, Goodman has set it up to have the Mirror Dragon be female, so being a female apprentice is utterly important. But it still makes for worthy discussion, if only to start asking questions about what kinds of stories can be told where the heroes/heroines don't have to be firmly one gender or the other.
In terms of world-building, I loved what Goodman created. It was unique and fascinating, and I want to know more about the dragons and what happened to the Mirror Dragon originally. Goodman even has a note in the back of the book to discuss her very obvious Chinese and Japanese inspirations, and there's also a section on her website for readers to look at some of her research (click here). As far as cultural appropriation goes, I wouldn't recognize it in this case unless it smacked me in the face with a horribly, bad, obvious stereotype. I didn't see any here, but that doesn't mean the book is free of them. Readers with more experience in the Chinese and Japanese cultures, please feel free to discuss how this book works as a secondary fantasy world that's heavily influenced by those two cultures. These books are always tricky for authors (as Stina Leicht has likely learned with her The Fey and the Fallen series and as Jay Kristoff is learning with Stormdancer), and while I've not heard any grumblings about this book, that doesn't mean said grumblings aren't out there.
The writing is quite solid, full of passages with fantastic description and fascinating magic. The characters felt fleshed out and created a cast I really wanted to root for. Even the apparent villain of the piece had an interesting fate, one I'm interested in seeing the results of in the next book.
My Rating: Good Read
Despite the length, Eon is a fast, engaging read that will pepper the reader with all kinds of questions about the nature of feminism, gender, and even disability. While I can't promise all of those answers will be satisfying, they work well to create a story that takes a common fantasy trope and turns it into an utterly important and necessary plot point. Goodman does a fantastic job with the narrative voice, which is worth noting because I suspect most writers would have trouble with a voice of a girl pretending to be a boy. I often forgot that Eon was female, and yet I never forgot, if that makes sense, and that's a tribute to Goodman's skill. The book certainly has me curious to see how the story wraps up in Eona, and the world-building is quite compelling and unique to readers who are used to the standard medieval fantasy fare. I can't speak to age group recommendations, because I don't have a child, but I do have nieces: I'm not sure I could recommend this to my nine-year-old niece, who has particularly religious parents who may be weirded out by some of the book's deeper questions and themes, but I do have a fourteen-year-old niece who might just be the right age for this. So it's definitely worth recommending to young teens in addition to adult fans of fantasy.
Cover Commentary: It's quite lovely and colorful. I love the rendition of the dragon in the sky, because it so fits the description in the book of how Eon sees the dragons.
Further Reading: With the theme of Aussie YA, sponsored host intoyourlungs gave me a number of books to choose from. Here's the full list:
Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn
Sonya Hartnett's The Midnight Zoo
Karen Healey's The Shattering
Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels
Melina Marchetta's Finnikin of the Rock
John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began
Gabriel Nix's Sabriel
Remember, all of these authors offer other titles, and if you're looking for more Aussie YA authors, you'd be remiss if you didn't add Justine Larbalestier to your reading diet. My favorite to date is Liar, but you can't go wrong with Magic or Madness.
As for Alison Goodman, you can check out the sequel, Eona, or you can pick up her SF-meets-jazz stand-alone, Singing the Dogstar Blues.
More Reviews: Check out the reviews book club participants have posted! If you reviewed this book but are not featured here, please comment below with a link to your review and I'll add it below.
burgandyice: Review Here
intoyourlungs: Review Here
shel99: Review Here
starmetal_oak: Review Here
temporaryworlds: Review Here
Book Club Poll: Just so you know, I'm not tracking participation points, but I do want to have some idea of how popular or unpopular a book club selection is, hence, the poll. If you're not on Live Journal, you can still vote using OpenID! Just go to Live Journal's home page and in the upper right-hand corner, log in using said OpenID address, and then you can vote on this page!
Poll September Participation
If you started the book but couldn't finish it, please comment and talk about the reasons why. What turned you off from the book? How far did you go before throwing in the towel?
And as you already know, the October Book Club selection is Sarah Langan's Audrey's Door. Some of you may have started it already, but if need additional details on the title, just click here.
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