I loved Moniquill Blackgoose’s debut novel, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which certainly earned its Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction in 2023 and its Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book in 2024 and justified Blackgoose’s winning the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2025. So I’ve been greatly anticipating its sequel, the second book of Nampeshiweisit. I’m happy to say that I really enjoyed To Ride a Rising Storm!
As a sequel, it doesn’t offer quite as much sensawunda as its predecessor, but some new worldbuilding is introduced, including some new characters from new cultures. Moreover, plot threads of personal relationships and intercultural conflicts are continued and expanded, in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways.
In the first book, teenage Anequs found a dragon’s egg and bonded with the hatchling Kasaqua, but was forced to leave her island and go to a dragon school run by the Anglish, her continent’s colonizers, to prevent Kasaqua from being taken away from her and killed as a dangerous feral animal. She studied what she had to, including rituals to shape the wild magic of a dragon’s breath into alchemically useful elements. Refusing to keep her head down as a “properly grateful” native, she became somewhat reluctantly involved in politics, standing up for herself and her people’s ways, earning renown from some and hatred from others.
Since the first book covered the first year of Anequs’ life with Kasaqua, ending with their first school year together, I had expected the second book to cover their second summer and school year. But events moved much slower than I expected (with half of the book read, it was just the first week of school) and also much faster, ending partway through the first semester. The most virulent racists and reactionary colonizers bitterly resent the rights being asserted by the conquered, aided by the semi-liberal elected jarl who rules the area and also wants more representation for the commoners of his own race. Individual acts are expanded organizationally, with dramatic and often tragic results.
This isn’t all about the colonization conflict, however, even though that does invade nearly every aspect of life. Anequs continues to struggle with relationships; raised among the open and tolerant indigenous islanders, she keeps running up against the taught prejudices and inhibitions of Theod, an indigenous orphan raised by the Anglish, and the time constraints and self-preservation practices of Liberty, an indentured servant at the school. She’s also happy to make friends with Jadi, a Pollish/Zhidi student, and even a visitor from beyond the Anglish empire.
The book doesn’t quite end on a cliffhanger, but it’s explicitly just a short breathing space before a much larger looming conflict. The Nampeshiweisit books will need to be at least a trilogy to finish the overall story, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they extend to four, five, or more books. I’m fascinated to see where this series will go, especially because of how it’s already subverted my expectations.
To Ride a Rising Storm is coming Jan. 27, 2026, and is available for preorder now.
Content warnings: Racism, colonialism (both negatively depicted and resisted); rioting, fighting, injuries, deaths.
Comps: Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series; various magic academy series; Sheine Lende, by Darcie Little Badger.
Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of this book for review from the publisher via NetGalley.
