John Wiswell's latest novel The Dragon Has Some Complaints is a masterful addition to the Nebula and Locus Award-winning author's growing body of work. Following the critical success of Someone You Can Build a Nest In and Wearing the Lion, Wiswell has once again reminded us of his singular ability to deliver a most unique voice, and this time it's a three-headed dragon with an inconvenient attachment to humanity.
Now, I am totally powerless against non-human perspectives in fiction. The moment a book says "told from the point of view of a creature who is not a person," I'm already buying it, already reading it, half emotionally compromised. Found family? Yes. Monsters learning what love is? Take my whole wallet. A dragon with three heads who each have wildly different personalities, and one of them thinks he's a human? I didn't stand a chance.
Meet Garrodigh, the Great Terror
The story follows Garrodigh, who was once a four-headed dragon, among the mightiest in the land of Kardoša. Then something unfortunate happened and now he has three heads, one very conspicuous stump, and a daily internal war that would exhaust anyone.
There's Centerhead, the cunning, world-weary one doing most of the thinking and suffering. He's the one who gets us through the book, managing his chaotic co-heads with the resigned patience of someone who has long since accepted that this is simply his life now. There's Bottomhead, who is essentially a feral cat (or dog?) in dragon form. Snacks are his primary concern. Snacks, and more snacks. Then there's Upperhead, who is sincerely convinced that he is a human who has somehow found himself trapped inside a dragon's body.
Wounded and alone after a battle (that he was not part of), Garrodigh does something more humiliating than losing a head: he plays injured dragon, letting the riders of Kardoša collect him as they do with any of their wounded dragons. He is brought into their care, given a lair, food, medication and everything an injured dragon of the floating city is entitled to. It is, objectively, an excellent plan. The fact that Garrodigh has his own ulterior motives regarding Kardoša is a detail he keeps very much to himself.
What he doesn't plan for is Rania Charvátová. Assigned as his rider and caretaker, she is relentlessly, almost aggressively kind. Though an outsider in Kardoša herself and loyal to a city that doesn't fully trust her back , she is, against all of Garrodigh's better instincts, impossible to dislike. Things get complicated, as things tend to do. All three heads start wanting things they didn't come here to want. Meanwhile, the invading FFR forces, biggest enemies of the kingdom, are closing in and the same enemy that took Garrodigh's fourth head now threatens everything he's accidentally started to care about.
A fantastic story with delightfully memorable voices
Cards on the table. I loved this book.
The non-human narrator thing is, as I mentioned, deeply my weakness and Wiswell does it better than almost anyone. Garrodigh's voice — or rather, voices, this whole multi-headed chorus of complaints and impulses and delusions — is one of the most inventive narrative constructions I've come across of late. The banter between the three heads is delightfully funny and very memorable.
There are multiple instances where Centerhead contemplates whether he could eat his own head and boy is he tempted to try. All three of them are their own person (or dragon), and I could not help but adore every single one of them.
And Rania — where do I even start? She is the kind of character who is so thoroughly good and so fundamentally kind that watching Garrodigh fall for her (all three heads, reluctantly, inevitably) felt completely earned. Her relationship with Garrodigh is easily the emotional core of this book and it reminds us once again that the best found family stories are about people (and dragons) who have every reason to keep their distance and choose not to.
The world, too, is gorgeous. Kardoša is a floating city under siege, a refugee state built by people with nowhere else to go. The queer normative worldbuilding is woven in with such ease that it never feels like a checkbox moment, but rather like a world that works the way worlds should work. And the second half of this book? The aerial battles? The escalating stakes? The moment where all three heads finally, finally want the same thing? I was unwell.
A word on John Wiswell
I love the author sooo much. Wiswell does what very few writers manage in the way he makes the strange feel tender. His narrators are almost always a little alien (a carnivorous monster and now a three-headed dragon) and yet we are always inside their experience in a way that feels beautifully intimate and true.
Wiswell finds the grief and emotion in his absurd premises without ever letting that grief swallow the joy. He writes about found family and healing and belonging with such earnestness that it bypasses every cynical defense mechanism one might have built up from reading too much grimdark.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In won him a Nebula and Wearing the Lion was nominated for one last year. The Dragon Has Some Complaints might be his best book yet in some ways. I cannot wait to see what John Wiswell does next.
Final verdict
The Dragon Has Some Complaints is already one of my favorite dragon books and it is a category I care about deeply and take very seriously.
It is also, without question, one of the best non-human perspective novels I have read. If you, like me, are the kind of reader who will drop everything for a story told through eyes that are not human eyes, this book was made for you.
Garrodigh has some complaints. I have none.
Five stars.
The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell is available now from DAW Books.
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