The Story of Owen, Dragon Slayer of Trondheim, by E.K. Johnston

Canada managed to retain a portion of its traditional music, largely thanks to a statute that mandated 40 percent of everything on the radio had to be written by a Canadian or feature a dragon slayer. This allowed for the success of songs like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which told the story of the attempted rescue-by-dragon-slayer of a tanker's crew after they were attacked in the middle of Lake Superior. Even though the tragedy resulted in the death of everyone involved, and Gordon Lightfoot, the composer of the song, was no more a bard than [Bram] Stoker was, it still clung to the old heroic style.

This is a very Canadian book. It is Canadian as all of my aunts put together at a folk music festival which is probably in Saskatchewan. It is also entirely charming, and filled with people who are kind and sensible. And whatever Johnston's editor may think, I do not think it's a Socialist Tract; but it is a book about working together as a community, and doing the things that can be done to make your community a better place.

Siobhan is an ordinary small-town-Ontario high school girl, talented at the baritone saxophone, good at composing but unsure about whether she wants to go to university to study composition. Late for algebra on the first day of school, she meets Owen, nephew of the famed dragon slayer Lottie Thorskard, recently retired after an accident in Toronto. When they meet, he gains an algebra tutor and she gains a friend -- and pretty soon, he gains a bard, as well, as Owen's aunts make plans to turn dragon-slaying from an elite thing done by a select few to a thing done by, and for, the whole community. (Did I mention Lottie is married to Hannah, an American swordsmith who defected from America because of DADT? They're pretty adorable.)

There is a little bit of the Temeraire problem in that the book asks you to believe that so much of history would have gone down almost the same if humanity was in constant danger from man-eating fire-breathing dragons. I keep wanting to pick at the worldbuilding: surely there's anti-dragon infrastructure that could have developed? Surely we would have figured out more ways to cut our dependence on things that generated dragon-attracting carbon? Is it that hard to just completely wipe out a large and dangerous predator, considering that we've eliminated wolves over a huge portion of their former range? But once you take the premise as given and just go with it, it's hugely enjoyable in its voice, and its characters. There's something about it that feels very different from a lot of modern urban fantasy. Solidarity instead of love triangles, a protagonist who is plausibly asexual but certainly more interested in dragons and saxophones, and a bunch of characters who are just plain likeable. Good stuff!