The Tea Dragon Festival
by K O'Neill
2019
The Tea Dragon Festival is sort of a prequel to K O'Neill's Tea Dragon Society. The older gay couple who serve as mentors in Society are young men here, still active as fantasy adventurers and bounty hunters, not yet settled down as tea shop owners or tea dragon enthusiasts. I think we may see the moments when Erik and his boyfriend Hesekiel decide what they eventually want to do when they retire, but it's not a pivotal moment in the story, just a conversation we see them have near the end of the book. A lot of O'Neill's storytelling is like this. The pace is slow, the plot is minimal, and key moments of characterization are so brief and so gentle that you only recognize their importance in retrospect.
Erik and Hesekiel are the only recurring characters, and the tea dragons - who are the only other connection between Society and Festival - play a very minor role this time around. The stars this time are Rinn, who is Erik's 'nibling', a term that's the nonbinary counterpart to nephew or niece, and Aedhan, a dragon in humanoid form who's just woken up from almost a century of magical slumber. Rinn is an aspiring cook who really excels at foraging for mushrooms in the forest. They live in a fairly isolated village (though it does have a train station), and they find Aedhan sleeping in a ruined shrine. Aedhan was sent by their dragon clan to be the village guardian, and he's shocked when he realizes how much time has passed.
We follow Rinn as they show Aedhan around the village and take him on a foraging trip. Erik and Hesekiel are visiting in pursuit of a bounty on an ancient spirit that puts people to sleep.
We see Rinn and Aedhan become friends, and possible develop the beginnings of a romance. I know Rinn is nonbinary because the four main characters get one-sentence biographies at the front of the book. No one ever uses a pronoun for them in the actual text, though you could probably read the book without noticing. The closest we get to explicit acknowledgment is Erik calling Rinn nibling, and a brief exchange where Rinn asks Aedhan is it's true that some dragons are skilled enough shapeshifters to not only change between humanoid and dragon form, but to also change between male and female forms, and when Aedhan says yes that's true, Rinn says that sounds nice. Without the bio at the beginning, I don't know if I would've read that as an expression of Rinn's identity, as opposed to like, Rinn being impressed by how cool dragons are. Aedhan's admiration for Rinn's mushroom hunting gives them the courage to keep cooking as a hobby instead of a career, and to focus more pn foraging. (K O'Neill has come out as nonbinary since this book was originally published, which makes me wonder if Rinn is at all a representation of the author.)
Erik and Hesekiel find the ancient spirit. It puts them to sleep, and they dream of the forest as it was in the magic-filled days of the ancient past, a place of awe-inspiring beauty. The two manage to wake up, but decide the spirit doesn't understand human lifespans and isn't trying to hurt anyone, so they politely ask it to stop. They seem to think this will work, and I guess the audience is meant to as well. Since they didn't capture the spirit, they won't collect a bounty - I think this is the turning point that leads them to think forward to their eventual retirement from adventuring, decades hence.
The last thing that happens is the titular tea dragon festival. The handful of tea dragons in the village are like communal pets. The mountain chamomile dragon is very fluffy and adorably grumpy looking. For the festival, they get dressed up with ribbons, and the villagers eat a feast and drink tea. Rinn shares some tea-dragon tea with Aedhan, which shows him some memories of village life that help relieve his guilt about his delayed start to being a guardian, and kind of affirms his friendship with Rinn.
There's a deck-building board game based on the tea dragon books, where each player has a tea dragon and tries to give them the most fulfilling experiences while reigning in their misbehavior. (They're very cat-like.) The game has two versions, one based solely on The Tea Dragon Society and one based on both Society and Festival, and the second version is probably better. It's more intuitive, has fewer turns where it feels like you can't do anything, and just generally seems to capture the intended play experience better. I think The Tea Dragon Festival is the same way. O'Neill seems better able to tell the kind of story they want here, to tell a stronger version of the same sort of coming-of-age tale about a young person deciding on their career befriending someone just returning to society after a debilitating magical illness, helped by mentors, and needing to give help to the fussy little tea dragons.
Erik and Hesekiel are the only recurring characters, and the tea dragons - who are the only other connection between Society and Festival - play a very minor role this time around. The stars this time are Rinn, who is Erik's 'nibling', a term that's the nonbinary counterpart to nephew or niece, and Aedhan, a dragon in humanoid form who's just woken up from almost a century of magical slumber. Rinn is an aspiring cook who really excels at foraging for mushrooms in the forest. They live in a fairly isolated village (though it does have a train station), and they find Aedhan sleeping in a ruined shrine. Aedhan was sent by their dragon clan to be the village guardian, and he's shocked when he realizes how much time has passed.
We follow Rinn as they show Aedhan around the village and take him on a foraging trip. Erik and Hesekiel are visiting in pursuit of a bounty on an ancient spirit that puts people to sleep.
We see Rinn and Aedhan become friends, and possible develop the beginnings of a romance. I know Rinn is nonbinary because the four main characters get one-sentence biographies at the front of the book. No one ever uses a pronoun for them in the actual text, though you could probably read the book without noticing. The closest we get to explicit acknowledgment is Erik calling Rinn nibling, and a brief exchange where Rinn asks Aedhan is it's true that some dragons are skilled enough shapeshifters to not only change between humanoid and dragon form, but to also change between male and female forms, and when Aedhan says yes that's true, Rinn says that sounds nice. Without the bio at the beginning, I don't know if I would've read that as an expression of Rinn's identity, as opposed to like, Rinn being impressed by how cool dragons are. Aedhan's admiration for Rinn's mushroom hunting gives them the courage to keep cooking as a hobby instead of a career, and to focus more pn foraging. (K O'Neill has come out as nonbinary since this book was originally published, which makes me wonder if Rinn is at all a representation of the author.)
Erik and Hesekiel find the ancient spirit. It puts them to sleep, and they dream of the forest as it was in the magic-filled days of the ancient past, a place of awe-inspiring beauty. The two manage to wake up, but decide the spirit doesn't understand human lifespans and isn't trying to hurt anyone, so they politely ask it to stop. They seem to think this will work, and I guess the audience is meant to as well. Since they didn't capture the spirit, they won't collect a bounty - I think this is the turning point that leads them to think forward to their eventual retirement from adventuring, decades hence.
The last thing that happens is the titular tea dragon festival. The handful of tea dragons in the village are like communal pets. The mountain chamomile dragon is very fluffy and adorably grumpy looking. For the festival, they get dressed up with ribbons, and the villagers eat a feast and drink tea. Rinn shares some tea-dragon tea with Aedhan, which shows him some memories of village life that help relieve his guilt about his delayed start to being a guardian, and kind of affirms his friendship with Rinn.
There's a deck-building board game based on the tea dragon books, where each player has a tea dragon and tries to give them the most fulfilling experiences while reigning in their misbehavior. (They're very cat-like.) The game has two versions, one based solely on The Tea Dragon Society and one based on both Society and Festival, and the second version is probably better. It's more intuitive, has fewer turns where it feels like you can't do anything, and just generally seems to capture the intended play experience better. I think The Tea Dragon Festival is the same way. O'Neill seems better able to tell the kind of story they want here, to tell a stronger version of the same sort of coming-of-age tale about a young person deciding on their career befriending someone just returning to society after a debilitating magical illness, helped by mentors, and needing to give help to the fussy little tea dragons.
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