I liked it, but...

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robinb Avatar

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3.75/5⭐️

I’m of two minds about this YA dystopian fantasy.

First the pros: it’s well written, features wonderful world-building and portrays strong male and female protagonists in Lee (17) and Annie (16)...we are able to hear both their perspectives as told in alternating chapters. And I especially enjoyed how the bonds were forged between humans and their dragons (and how strong they become).

But I felt that it was too drawn out, lagged in places and could’ve been much tighter than 400+ pages. There was also a lot of political intrigue here, between an old regime ruled by a triarchy of dragonlords and a post-revolution government headed by a First Protector. The author notes that she based some of her political structure on Plato’s Republic and Virgil’s Aeneid, and while I’m not very familiar with these works, I will say that I became somewhat frustrated with how similarly power-hungry they both were. Also the class system reminded me a bit of the Divergent series. One other thing that irritated me was the romance here. While Annie & Lee share a deep and abiding bond, there is an additional third party that just served to confuse me. TBH, I wanted to throttle Lee more than a few times for behavior that seemed out of character to me in this triangle.

It ended with a bit of a cliffhanger, and as I see that there will be at least two more books in this series, yes, I’ll probably add them to my TBR. :-)

Thanks to #BookishFirst! The opinions are strictly my own.