Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > Head of a Snake, Tail of a Dragon

This is a delightful short story sequel to Zen Cho's Hugo award-winning novelette, If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again. And both are free online, so win-win!

Jin-Dae is an imugi, a magical serpent that can - if it learns and grows in the right way - turn into a dragon. But Jin-Dae has no particular interest in becoming a dragon; she's just fine with her life the way it is. Except that there aren't as many wild animals around to eat as there used to be, so occasionally she has to resort to eating a human. ("Humans were infinitely preferable to snakes as dinner, but the disadvantage of eating humans was how personally they took it.")

Unfortunately the human she's planning to eat for dinner talks loudly enough to catch the attention of a dragon named "Aspire to Heaven." Aspire to Heaven announces that he wants to instruct Jin-Dae in the Way to become a dragon (which, he tells her, does NOT include eating humans, especially teenagers). But Jin-Dae really isn't interested in anything Aspire to Heaven has to say to her.

It's an amusing story - I really enjoyed the bits with Tyrone, the human dinner for the imagi, who doesn't react to his situation in any of the ways you might expect. And there's a good if somewhat heavy-handed message about accepting others for who they are without trying to change them.

Read it online here on the author's website. But you really need to read the novelette first, or you'll miss a lot of what's going on in this story.