But Tess sees what ‘‘civilized’’ actually means: colonization. The Ninysh claim to have ‘‘civilized’’ the islanders, known by the rest of the world as the Pelaguese, although they do not call themselves that. Tess’s half-dragon sister Saint Seraphina (who has her own duology, Seraphina and Shadow Scale, but you don’t need to read those first in order to read this series) has commissioned Tess to spy on the Ninysh on behalf of the Goreddi queen. Soon the crew are off, sailing south through a sprawling archipelago originally home to countless islander societies and now colonized by the Ninysh. She’s also joined by Jacomo, a seminary dropout Tess never got along with, but who slowly becomes something more to her as both are changed by their experiences. Armed with a vow to Pathka and his offspring Kikiu and a desire to make restitution, she undertakes the unenviable task of trying to find the one resting under the polar seas while also preventing Marga and their competitors, a fleet of dragon scientists, from getting to it first and killing it in the name of science.

When she announced her discovery of an earlier World Serpent, she indirectly contributed to its death. Four years later, we are finally gifted with the sequel, In the Serpent’s Wake, or as I have been calling it, “Tess of the Sea.” Picking up right where we last left Tess, the sequel expands on her personal and physical journeys by filtering them through a lens of anti-colonialism.Īt the end of Tess of the Road, Tess had joined up with Countess Marga to find another World Serpent in an attempt to save the life of Pathka, her quigutl friend. I went in expecting a light fantasy quest with dragons and ended up with a powerful coming-of-age story about trauma and finding your place in the world. I didn’t plan to fall in love with Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road.

Tess of the road by rachel hartman