I recently dipped my toes in Young Adult fiction and gave Kenton Kilgore’s Dragontamer’s Daughters a read. I’m glad I did.

Two girls find a dragon like no other—and their lives will never be the same!

In an alternate Old West, Isabella and Alijandra live exiled with their parents in the high desert. Years before, the girls’ father caught, tamed, and trained dragons for the Emperor’s armies, but now he is an outlaw, blamed for the deaths of thousands.

Finding a small dragon gravely injured after a fight, the girls take her home and begin tending her back to health. Alijandra calls the dragon “Pearl,” after her round white eyes. As time goes on and Pearl begins to heal, the family learns more about her and the strange and terrifying abilities she possesses.

But time is running out for them, their family, and for Pearl herself. Soon, they will be forced to contend with the native people on whose lands they live. With the ambitious governor whose soldiers hunt the girls’ father. With a man who has no name but wields immense, eerie powers. With Pearl’s yearning to fulfill the journey that accidentally brought her to the girls. And with their own dreams and wishes for a life they once lived—and might live again.

If you were a fan of the “Little House” books as a child, you will enjoy this tale of family, hard work, and love.  Kilgore portrays a family living at the edge of impoverishment, but still loving and caring for one another during trying times.

Every character that gets more than a page worth of attention in this book grows as the story unfolds, which is a rare trick in fiction. The two main characters, sisters  Isabella and Alijandra, grow from one stage of life to the next as they work through the challenges life throws at them, including a magical dragon that needs their help.

Kilgore obviously knows the high desert setting very well, but he paints everything in vivid, detailed strokes that will fill the reader’s mind and enrich the story.

This isn’t an action story, but it is filled with tension until the final chapters, when everything erupts into a fast-paced race to the book’s conclusion. In between all that, there are many thought-provoking, touching scenes that will stay with you.

Sarah Hoyt’s new collection of short stories, So Little and So Light, is packed with stories that will both entertain you and make you think.

From a parallel world where we have all the dreams of pulp writers, to a future where bioengineering kindles new hates and new heroes, to a different Tudor England, to the intricacies of time wars, this science fiction collection provides a glimpse of things undreamed… some from which we’ll gladly waken, and some we’d very much like to be true.

So Little and So Light contains stories from Mrs. Hoyt’s “USAIAN” universe, in which the USA is almost an ancient myth, but its spirit lives on in those who still believe, as well as stories about the far future and alternate histories.  Each one stands very well on its own, but most of them could definitely be followed up by either more short works or full length books.  I enjoyed all of them, but my favorites were “Lost” and the title work, “So Little and So Light”.

I normally burn through short story collections, but the writing in this one was so good that I took my time, even stopping after several of the stories to think about their plots and the questions they bring up.  Mrs. Hoyt is a master of drawing the characters and scenery in the reader’s mind without writing long overt descriptions, and I found myself getting lost in the worlds she creates in her stories.

If you’re a fan of alternate history, science fiction, or just good, fun stories, So Little and So Light will be a good fit for you.