Thank you to Neon Yang, NetGalley, Macmillan, and Recorded Books for the advanced listening copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely adored this book. The world building was so well done that I felt immersed in the story almost straight from the beginning. The characters felt genuine and like people I would like to know. Nancy Wu, the audiobook narrator, did an excellent job of captivating my attention and clearly delineating the characters. The queer representation was authentic and embedded in the story without requiring fantastical homophobia to contend with (my preferred way of experiencing queerness in fantasy). The plot twist wasn't surprising but it was still enjoyable to read.

My only complaint is that I wish it were 300 pages longer. I longed to know more about Yeva's story before the time she was sent to Quanbao. I wanted to know who, if anyone, had comforted Yeva before she found comfort in [redacted].

Although I enjoyed the limited third narration, I also wished I could have learned more about what Lady Sookhee went through in her life up to the point of their encounter. I will absolutely be reading more from Yang and look forward to the day they write something so long I can sink my teeth into it.

Very good as a fantasy novella but I wish it was longer! Excellent world building and believable magic system. Main character is dynamic despite the shortness of the story. Fast paced.
Audiobook narration was seamless and non-distracting from the story. More of a storyteller vibe than a character actor one.

I would be stoked to see more stories come out of this world!

I was very intrigued by the blurb for this one, and ultimately came away feeling lukewarm. Yeva is a masked knight who is a dragon slayer (despite only ever hearing about her slaying one dragon when she was young?). She’s sent to a neighboring kingdom and is selling any evidence of dragons.

The prose was lovely and this was told like a legend. I found it descriptive and evocative. However, I think the plot and the characters fell flat. Both the main ladies lacked depth, and definitely suffered from the novella length. I may also be slow but I’m not sure I understood the climax of the book - it just seemed to easily resolve. The romance did not feel compelling, the two women just kind of ended up together despite having no chemistry. If this had been novel-length I imagine some of my criticisms would have evaporated with more page time for characters and plot:relationship development.

The audiobook narrator was wonderful, I think she gave an excellent performance.

Thank you to Neon Yang, RBmedia, and NetGalley for the ARC!

For a short novella, I thought this had a slow start. There was a huge time just after chapter two that felt disjointed. Maybe the information would have been delivered more effectively through a prologue or even short flashbacks. I wish we would have been out into the story more immediately.

Cool idea, I just wasn’t able to get invested.

Thanks to Net Galley for this audiobook for review.

Brighter than Scales, Swifter than Flames is a queer novella set in an East Asian–inspired world, following dragon hunter Yeva as she embarks on a diplomatic mission to the neighboring nation of Quanbao with a secret mission of finding and slaying a rouge dragon that is rumored to be hidden by the people there. At the court of the irl King Sookhee, Yeva finds herself navigating a foreign court that, culturally, starts to feel more like home than the empire she serves. Despite being a knight of the Sun Empire, Yeva was raised closer to Quanbao until a young dragon attacked her family and she awakened to a mysterious power that caused her to be sent away to the empire’s capital and be trained as a dragon slayer.

The novella seems it was written for me. I love dragons, I love knights, I love lesbians and I love literature that explores themes of identity and belonging. Yeva feels torn between both cultures, never quite belonging anywhere and preferring to hide behind her armor. If you combine all of that and add an absolutely gorgeous cover on top, I will buy it without a second thought.
Despite the premise the book is more of a character exploration and less about actual knighthood and dragon hunting, but it worked for me. Yeva’s struggle with identity and growing anxiety is written out thoughfully and with beautiful prose.

Unfortunately the mystery part of the book fell flat for me. The central plot twist is incredibly obvious from the start and it can be frustrating to watch Yeva fail to connect the dots, even when she clearly senses something is amiss.. I think there could have been more about her putting the truth together but not wanting to believe it for the sake of the peace , sense of belonging and love she has made in her new country.

As a very short book, sitting around 180 pages, the character development for characters outside of Yeva had to suffer a little. I wish we got to see more of the side characters to raise the stakes for the climax, but nonetheless had an amazing time with the novella.

This book shifts from a storytelling narrator to the perspective of Yeva in third-person. What’s nice is we get a broad overview of her backstory and we get to also know more about how she became this faceless knight who is loyal to the emperor. However, I think this style didn’t quite work for me. The overarching storyline was awesome, but I felt a lack of compassion for the characters and I think it’s interesting where certain details were focused. I feel like I missed out on a lot of character building when we jumped 12 years and the time we spent with Yeva didn’t allow me to really love her as a character. Perhaps, it’s more about how Yeva reconnects with her childhood home and its culture, rather than the romance that is being marketed, but I think that we’re still missing something that really pushes the narrative in a specific direction.

I would recommend this novella for those who enjoy quick fantasy tales that give an overarching legend. It feels like a tale of a hero and I do think the tale is worth a read. Yang created quite an illustrative world in a short amount of time which leaves me wanting more.

Narrator Review: Nancy Wu is a wonderful narrator. Her voice has a tone of wisdom and magic that works really well for the legend telling aura that this writing style is in. Her narration really elevated the fable-like feeling of this story.

(4.25 stars)

I picked this up for the cover and it did not disappoint. If you're a fan of lush worlds, evocative and vivid prose this novella is for you.
This was my first book by Neon Yang and I fell in love with their writing. They manage to transport the reader into the world with beautiful prose that never feels too bloated and never takes away from a plot that runs seamlessly from beginning to end.
As a character focused reader, I really enjoyed the journey our main character takes leaving her home, being honed into a weapon for the Empire, and battling with her feelings when loyalties clash when she's sent on a mission to a foreign land. The journey Yeva takes shedding her armor (literally and metaphorically) with the help of Lady Sookhee was deeply emotional.

Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame is a beautiful sapphic knight x monarch novella with rich lore, dragons and a very sweet and touching romance and the audiobook was equally as enjoyable. The narrator does a great job at bringing this world to life and making it an immersive listen.

Experiencing this on audiobook was the way to go! I really enjoyed this short tale about a dragon slayer and her dragon queen. My main complaint is that it isn't longer - I would've loved diving into these characters more. However, Yang does a great job of fleshing out Yeva's character and creating a compelling plot for such a short tale.

Big thanks to NetGalley for the audiobook! I devoured Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame in one sitting—it’s that gripping. Neon Yang delivers an interesting and emotional story with a unique style that really stands out.

It did take me about 30–40 pages to get used to the writing, but once I settled in, I was hooked. The world is strange in the best way, the characters are compelling, and the emotional beats hit hard. I did figure out the big twist before the characters did, but that just made the buildup even more intense.

If you’re into lyrical prose, queer speculative fiction, and stories that aren’t afraid to take risks, definitely give this one a shot. It’s short, sharp, and leaves a lasting impression.

Book Rating:⭐️4.25/5

This was such a solid sapphic fantasy novella! I really enjoyed the pacing; it was a quick read but still managed to pack in so much. The Asian-inspired fantasy setting completely pulled me in, and the chemistry between Yeva and Sookhee was so well written. I loved the intrigue of Yeva needing to uncover more about the mysterious Sookhee, it added a great layer to the story.

My only complaint? I wish it had been longer! I wanted more time in this captivating world. The cultural connections, the rediscovery of identity, and the family ties Yeva was grappling with were all beautifully done and so compelling. Neon Yang nailed the representation in this one, and I really appreciated the thoughtful storytelling.

Highly recommend if you’re looking for an Asian-inspired, fairy tale-like fantasy with sapphic romance and rich cultural themes!

Neon Yang’s writing is just STUNNING. The definition of lush without being pretentious.

The world they’ve built in Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame was easy to picture, and I loved the elements of mythology and magic.

The drawback for me was the characters. We follow Yeva’s story from childhood to becoming this feared masked warrior (so cool) when she joins Sookhee’s court, but we never get close to her, or the girl King. The feelings and actions of the characters feel explained rather than earned, so the payoff was a bit of a letdown.

This could be due to the format (it being a novella) but the story could have benefitted from more of everything: tension, stakes, emotions, complexity.

I’d still read something else from this author, given their imagination and style!

This tried to be The Fireborne Blade but turned into a fairy tale.

The premise of a dragon slayer family involved in court politics is a good one, but the became a sapphic romance before we could even learn the MC was a real dragon slayer.

If you're looking for more romance than dragon slaying you'll enjoy it more than I did, but the ending turned this into a modern fairy tale with a slightly adult touch.

Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame is an ~175 page fantasy novella in a lush, East Asian-inspired setting following a masked knight, Yeva, and the Girl-King of the neighboring country of Quanbao, Sookhee. Yeva has been trained under the knights of the Sun Emperor to serve her nation by slaying dragons with her bloodline’s magic. She has managed to do all this while never removing her armor, staying completely masked even to her colleagues. When she is sent as a diplomat to the small neighboring nation of Quanbao, near her own homeland, she begins to struggle with her task of searching for conspiracies of hidden dragons, her growing feelings towards Sookhee, and her allegiances with her culture of her childhood versus the Sun Empire who trained her.

Yeva is the standout of this novella. Growing up until her early teens, she lived in a village on the far edges of the Sun Empire near the border of Quanbao. The culture she grew up in, especially the food and language, are much more similar to that nation than the Sun Empire’s capital that she lived in for the 12 years after her forced arrival (she is 25 at the start of the novella). After arriving in Quanbao, we see vividly how Yeva struggles to connect the far away memories and language skills of her childhood to her sudden arrival in this strange but so familiar place. We learn, through Yeva’s memories of childhood and later knight training, the longing she has for her culture of her childhood as well as the way she buried this feeling deep inside of her. These things led to her complete comfort in the Empire’s armor and her refusal to ever remove the set, or reveal her name or gender, in public. She is both learning how to engage with her culture after a lifetime hiding it away and learning to be a person in general again. This conflict is written with so much care and, to me, is the heart of the novel more than any romance or investigation.

The narration was stylized as this sort of distanced old fable. Those “once upon a time…” narrators over a fairytale sort. This allowed for the narrative to have plenty of time to breathe and build its lush setting and atmosphere a slight distance away from the main character, but without ever getting slowed down too much. The moments of exposition feel natural to the story and work with the narrator’s voice. Though I fully agree that that was the right choice for the story, I felt that its execution became a bit clunky at times. This is especially true when going from a long period of Yeva’s thoughts or from longer dialogue sections. After those types of scenes, it takes a few more paragraphs for the author to get back in the swing of the style. We also get a lot of telling, not showing. It’s par for the course with this style of narration and was never a real problem for me, but if it's a huge pet peeve of yours then this may not be a story for you. The stylization is never confusing or disorienting, but just a bit distracting and could have used a bit of polish to really bring out the best in the work.

This book was a very comfortable length that I finished in two sittings. I always respect an author limiting themself to a shorter length, and I feel that the shorter length worked in favor of this particular story because of the story-teller narration style (it never got old or boring). As with other novellas, we lose out on a bit of character development due to the limited page count. Yeva is developed very well and is a fully fleshed out character, Sookhee is done well for her role in the story, though lacking in comparison to Yeva, and Emory is left high and dry. For the importance that he and his relationship play into the climax confrontation, we rarely see him. Another couple of short flashbacks of him and Yeva growing up, hinting more at his character and ideals, would have really helped the lack of everything about him. It doesn't ruin the climax or resolution, but does handicap it greatly as I never fully understood him or his actions. The two scenes of him, one as a child and another right before Yeva leaves for Quanbao, don’t line up with what we see of him at the end.

I felt that the romance was lacking in this novella. It is not a major problem for me, as I do not really read romance stories and never miss them in the first place, but we never really see the development of our two leads’ relationship. We hear that Yeva is visiting Sookhee for tea and language lessons most days, but never get to experience them with her. This is, in part, due to the story-teller narration style, as many things are brushed over as tropes indicative of the genre, but I imagine many romance fans picking up this book for this reason might be disappointed.

This is a nice, nimble fantasy novella that I imagine will delight many people. Though lacking in a few sections, I enjoyed my short time with it and will take it as a sign to look at some of the author’s other works.

The audiobook narration was done extremely well and really brought out the best in the novella. I loved her voice and the pronunciation of the Chinese names throughout. She really fit the storyteller style of the novella.

Special thanks to NetGalley, TOR and RB Media for a chance to listen to this audiobook, as this is my first ALC/ARC review I'll do my best to be as honest and detailed as possible

Rating ⭐2.5 (rounded up)
Spice 🌶️0
Cover 5/5

This story follows Yeva, a legendary masked dragon hunter. Haunted by a past she barely remembers, after training and hunting dragons half of her life Yeva is sent to the reclusive kingdom of Quanbao, where dragons are worshipped instead of feared. While searching for a rumored dragon, she finds herself drawn to Quanbao's enigmatic ruler, Lady Sookhee. They end up falling for each other, though I feel Yeva is rather one dimensional and couldn't figure out what Sookhee saw in her or exactly when they decided to establish a relationship, because; like all novellas that aren't based on an already established series of books, it felt incredibly rushed but also simultaneously slow in parts.
I feel like this book would have benefited being written in the first person, or if it switched between point of views, such as Sookhee's POV for instance, as is stands all the events such as her training and her experiences were told to us instead of us as the viewers experiencing them with her so that connection you are generally supposed to feel for the MC is lacking.

All in all, it was only okay, only because it was so rushed and the characters weren't really fleshed out and the conclusion was incredibly obvious. It was cute though, and if the series continues as a full length novel, or in the same universe I'd probabaly read it.

Fans of Priory of the Orange Tree look no further for your next dragon fix! I love that we are getting more fantasy novellas. I think this is a great story that is action packed into a short book. I thought that Brighter than Scale, Swifter Than Flame was paced perfectly. The story flowed easily and the world building was just complex enough for a novella, without being too shallow. I liked the classic tales of dragons and curses that this played off of and that this book made me feel like I was listening to someone tell a fable around a campfire. The love story was prevalent without taking center stage to the overarching story. Overall, this was a very well balanced and paced book. I loved the dragons as enemies element, this has been something I have seen less of lately and I love to see the “dragon slayer” main character make a return. In the archetypes return I loved that it was shown in a queer, disabled woman. I also loved the “mandalorian” comp for her armour that she wears. I love the armour trope and it worked well in this story. Yeva was a fun character with so many unique motivations. She was a very interesting and thought provoking character to follow. I truly enjoyed the audiobook version of this story. Nancy Wu's low raspy and sultry voice really embodied Yeva well. I thought that her voice really suited our battle worn and weary soldier, and helped immerse me in the story. Even sped up she was easy to understand and she had a nice voice variance for different characters. This was a great fantasy audiobook and I will definitely recommend it to any fantasy reader looking for a well-written novella!

Que linda novella, la construcción de mundo y del personaje principal fue hermosa a pesar de ser corta, me hubiese gustado que el romance se desarrollara un poco más, pero fue una excelente lectura rápida que logró adentrarme en un mundo de fantasía genial. La narradora hace un hermoso trabajo dando vida a los personajes.

4/5⭐
5/5🎧

A well-narrated little dragon novella. I would have liked more about Yeva's exploits and the politics of Quanbao, but overall this was an engaging story with interesting characters and setting.

Thanks NetGalley and RB Media for an advanced audio of this book.

A really stunningly written fantasy queer romance with emotional characters

The novella felt like a taster and would love to read more about this world.

3.5 realiaticallty. This queer fantasy novella was host to fascinating world that was easily and quickly built. The characters are flawed and morally grey trying to do what they believe is right which isnt always good. The twists and turns kept coming and kept me invested as it was short. I almost wish for more so I could emotionally connect to the characters on a deeper level. The time skips left a lot of world and story unexplored which could have spread into a full novel but I enjoyed the plot and the parts of the world we for to see. The voice acting was beautiful and kept me interested. The time seemed to fly by as I was absorbed in the story.

In a world where dragons are a real threat, dragonslayers have become a political weapon. Yeva, whose powers manifested at a very young age, was torn from her origins and bound to the empire's will. When a new threat forces her to return to her roots as a diplomatic envoy, everything she has learned over the years about power and her enemies is put to the test.

The story has a legendary tone that draws from oral tradition and sets the action in a realm inspired by the great Eastern empires, while also occupying a mystical plane. The prose is beautiful but, in my opinion, not overly ornate, avoiding the unnecessary kind of embellishment that could make it heavy or difficult to read.

It’s a short story in which the author manages to build a rich and expansive fantasy world, but the real strength lies in the introspective nature of the protagonist and her inner conflict as she navigates the friction between her culture of origin and her adopted one.
If I had to point out a flaw, it would be that at times the story feels like something we’ve seen before. That said, the perspective is fresh, and instead of witnessing the creation of a myth, the action unfolds long after the myth has already been established. Still, some plot elements felt predictable, and their revelations came too late, even after they had become obvious to the reader, though not to the protagonist. This made the action feel unnecessarily drawn out at times, even in such a short piece.

Overall, however, this is a vivid and engaging read, rich and expansive, with a main character who’s pleasant enough to accompany through an intriguing world. If Yang chooses to return to it with more pages, I’ll gladly return too.