I love stories about knights, especially gay knights, and especially repressed knights. Something about the parallels of wearing full armour to protect yourself and keeping all emotional walls up is something I find extremely compelling to read. So Neon Yang’s novella Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame (out May 6th, 2025), about a stoic knight who never removes her armour in public, is tailor-made for me.
The novella follows Yeva, a girl who kills her first dragon at thirteen, and upon the revelation of her dragon-slaying powers, is sent off on her own to the capital city of her kingdom to become a guildknight. She feels out of place and alone so far from home, so she makes her new home her duty to her kingdom. This devotion to her cause powers her through every tough situation she encounters, personal or physical, and eventually she becomes one of the most renowned guildknights in the kingdom. It’s her skill at slaying dragons that gets her sent on her own to the kingdom of Quanbao to investigate rumours of dragon activity. There she meets the young queen, Lady Sookhee, and the two form a tenuous but blossoming relationship.
My relationship with Tor novellas has been pretty hit or miss in the past. Either they’re really impactful and get me with a bunch of emotions packed into 200 pages or less, or I feel nothing. Fortunately, this is closer to the hit end of the spectrum! I was invested in Yeva as a character, and I wanted to see her internal journey grappling with her emotions and sense of duty while they were at war with each other. It wasn’t stuffed full of feelings in the same way that some other novellas I’ve enjoyed have been, but I still appreciated what the author was doing with the story. The plot was engaging, and while it was predictable in some ways, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of it.
The only thing I wasn’t totally onboard with was how the romance was written, mostly because I didn’t feel that much chemistry between the characters. The story sticks tight to Yeva’s perspective, and because she’s spent her whole life pushing her emotions down and hiding behind her helmet, I felt it was difficult to figure out what was going on with the relationships between her and the other characters. Because of this, the story reads as more reflective on just the main character than anything else, and the writing felt a little bit detached and distant. I’m someone who wants the emotional connections in stories to hit me with a punch, and here I only felt a bit of a poke.
This was my first Neon Yang read, and I think I’d like to read more of their work in the future. If you’re a fan of stories of gay knighthood like I am, check this novella out! Thanks to Netgalley and Tor for the eARC in exchange for an honest review! Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame releases May 6th, 2025.
