The publisher’s description of Cheri Radke’s novel, An Accident of Dragons, makes it sound like a romp: “An unlikely lord finally meets a problem he can’t flirt his way out of in this adventurous and light-hearted queer cozy fantasy featuring pirates, dragons, kidnapping, tea, and other high-fantasy delights…” It mostly is, and it’s a lot of fun, but there are also touches of long-set sorrow and suppressed issues that ended up having to be faced. So rather than just being cotton candy, there’s some meat on the bones of this story. Tasty, tasty meat.
The island-nation of Summer is dominated by an immense, ancient dragon named Summer, who is really into stability; each successive person who serves as her intermediary/ruler of the human population takes the title of Summer. When the last person in the “ruling” bloodline dies without an heir, Summer chooses his male lover as the successor. Teddy, Lord Summer, knows he’s been getting by on sufferance and charm since then, but he figures he’s done his duty by marrying and begetting a daughter-heir, Zinnia (whom he loves dearly).
Zinnia, now 5, is old enough to get bored and get into trouble. While exploring Summer’s sea caves, she’s captured by a pirate who’d been looking for a dragon egg. Teddy insists on accompanying the fleet trying to get her back, since she’s his daughter and he’s been adventuring abroad in his youth. But when they get to the mainland, things are confusing: There’s no sign of the pirates, the nobility are exquisitely polite, and it looks as though their lovely island is way behind the times, due to the dragon’s enforced isolationism.
As mentioned above, this book is a lot of fun. Teddy’s impostor syndrome is so extreme that he pressures someone else to impersonate Lord Summer while he “helps”, which turns out to be hilarious; Teddy has fraught relationships with the admiral of the fleet and with his stepson who just joined that fleet; Teddy’s fashion knowledge is sometimes helpful and sometimes useless; misunderstandings and cross-purposes (and cross-dressing) happen frequently, and there are frothy layers upon layers upon layers to reveal.
There are also layers of past trauma, fear, repression, and rage to reveal. The dragon’s dislike of change has been deeply impressed upon her island’s people, and Teddy and his refugee mother had a really hard time when they first came to Summer. Most people on the peaceful, stable island think that being hungry is just having to wait an hour or so for dinner; Teddy’s knowledge of that, although distant now, is bone-deep — he has a very slight frame and was quite slender until the dragon made him start putting on muscle. Teddy and her mother were starving until she made a place for herself in society by adopting the oldest profession, which came with its own repercussions, including the expectation for Teddy to do the same, which is why he’s so incredibly good at charm, as well as much better at recognizing subtle threats than the admiral.
Also, the dragon-chosen leaders have sometimes been far from benign, and more and more about this is revealed as the book progresses. In addition, although most people on the island ignore it, Summer herself is rather more controlling than generally acknowledged. And so are other dragons, even as people seek to control them.
I don’t want to spoil any details here, but I was really impressed at how Radke revealed the wider extent of the world outside Summer, as Teddy and the fleet found out more, and important things about the world they’d always lived in but hadn’t realized. I really enjoyed Teddy’s development throughout the book, as he came to acknowledge things he’d repressed, not only unpleasantness he’d undergone, but ways he’d directly or indirectly harmed other people, including his late love. Eventually he learns to open himself up to feelings and risks, and ties to others; in so doing, he becomes more powerful than he’d ever dreamed of before.
The publisher’s page actually lists this book as the beginning of a series: Tales of Summer #1. This is NOT a book that ends on a cliffhanger, however; it has a perfectly satisfying conclusion. There are just a few threads that I expect will be woven into later adventures, including the further adventures of Zinnia and her sibling(s).
An Accident of Dragons, by Cheri Radke, is being published today, April 28, 2026; you can order it here. You can also read part of the first chapter here, at reactormag.
Content warnings: Mental domination and control over humans; magical control over dragons; imposter syndrome; sexuality, gender expectations and pressure to have children; piracy, fights, deaths, murder.
