There are so many authors who are active and prolific that you never hear about, even in genre fiction spaces. For instance, before I started writing my thoughts on "Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls" I had no reference point for Jane Lindskold beyond having read a book I bought on a whim at a used bookstore because I feel guilty going into used bookstores and not buying anything.
Lindskold had a book come out last year. She has multiple series and almost a dozen standalone novels. She was mentored by Roger Zelazny and cowrote several books with him. Charles de Lint and Terri Windling have praised some of her works. She's also written books with David Weber so perhaps I haven't heard of her because she hangs out in some libertarian military boner spaces?
There are so many books out there, guys.
This was her first novel and it's really damn good for a debut novel. It's the sort of book that really demonstrates why sometimes speculative fiction is the blanket genre term you need, as opposed to fantasy or science fiction, more concerned with following the thread of a story than fitting the story into rigid genre conventions (which are ultimately a marketing tool and should be scorned as such).
I thought, based on the title and cover, that I would be reading an urban fantasy novel, cars and secret elves and such. But the setting is actually an unstated near-future, drawing slightly on the cyberpunk of the late '80s -- hacking and retinal scans, criminal acts for survival, an urban jungle underclass with colourful hair and body modification. There's an undercurrent of medical thriller.
There is a dragon, but it's a two-headed plastic toy.
Sarah, the protagonist does psychically communicate with the dragon, though, and Sarah herself does bring the tone of the book back to something evocative of the early '90s urban fantasy, where a protagonist feels like a fairy changeling left in a world of technology, as opposed to someone goth hot in leather pants casting spells. We meet Sarah shortly before she's forcibly discharged from a mental hospital, part of a huge push to free up space by sending patients who will 'probably manage' back out into a world with no real support structure in place. She's autistic, although I'm not sure what the standard for that kind of diagnose was in 1994, let alone the pop culture perspective on it. In "Brother to Dragon, Companion to Owls" it means she's illiterate and has been mute for most of her life, although she now speaks entirely in quotations, primarily from Shakespeare and the Bible.
Lindskold avoids stepping in the popular autism as a superpower puddle by telling the book from Sarah's perspective, so the reader knows she's sheltered but not stupid, an adult for all she's infantilized by the people around her, desirous of communicating and trying to do so with the tools at her disposal. The speaking in quotations is a conceit that is pulled off with surprising effectiveness. It doesn't feel like reference drops with a knowing elbow in your ribs or an opportunity for Lindskold to show off her education, but instead reads almost like someone trying to interact with the world via a non-traditional videogame interface that occasionally frustrates them. There are several sentences Sarah repeats throughout the book, sometimes clearly stating in her internal narrative that she's choosing a particular quote with a sense of 'fuck it, maybe this will work, even though it really doesn't fit'.
Have you ever played a videogame with a text parser? Or played the voice-controlled mess of a game, Lifeline? Maybe Loom? It's interesting and strangely easy once you get into the rhythm of the book.
The autism referenced early on feels like a red flag for This Will Be A Problematic Book That Hasn't Aged Well and, while I can't speak for how it would strike an actually autistic person, I was pleasantly surprised by the end, particularly as the novel does not conclude with Sarah being 'cured'.
I don't know what Lindskold's later books are like, but this little novel was fast, interesting, and even got me a bit teary at one point. Sometimes those used bookstore impulse purchases really work out. Love that for me.