Not my cup of tea. A little too trope-heavy for me to enjoy without feeling like it was checking off tropes (or scenes from other books) off of a list. The main character was not particularly interesting once discovered her longing for the LI. Much of the world-building and lore was lost beneath the modern-day dialogue, building of the romantic plot, exposition and info dumping. The book feels more as if it was originally written for a younger audience, YA perhaps, which I've grown out of but was placed into NA due to the sexual content. The characters are underdeveloped and immature. I would have preferred more focus on the world-building and dragon lore but much of the story was spent in the MC's head and that was often clouded by sexual tension or lust/desire for the LI (and by this I mean any actual plot happening in these scenes would be immediately interrupted by her internal dialogue of longing). Not really for me but lovers of ACOTAR, Divergent, and How to Train Your Dragon would likely enjoy as there were several overlapping themes/vibes etc. throughout the story. Elements of Red Queen were present, which I did enjoy, but without the same quality of writing. I think this book unfortunately suffers from awkward dialogue, strange pacing, and lack of confidence in it's own world-building. The author seems like the original focus was either meant to be less focused on the romance but was asked to add more "spice" to be competitive a romantasy market with books like ACOTAR and TOG, OR the author wanted to focus more on the romantasy elements and less so on the world building. I read this around when it first came out but even hearing that subsequent books have "stronger plot elements and world-building" isn't enough to entice me to read more. It's not for me, but it might be for you.

Positives:
- Dragons (needed more page time and more fleshing out)

- A few creative solutions to one-on-one fights that were above MC's physicality

- Some of the lore or guide excerpts added to the beginning of each chapter.

Negatives:
- "Violence" is an intolerable nickname especially when used in serious situations.

- Ambiguously "tan" characters made me give this an "it's complicated" on diverse characters because characters rarely were given much depth beyond some surface-level observations and even some of those were vague. If you have to find out from the author that the LI reflects a specific real-world race, it might be a little too ambiguous. RY is far from the only author to write ambiguously tan/dark male characters who often end up not actually being men of color. It feels like a cop-out for a writer and/or publisher to try and appeal to a wider audience without committing to any specific race. As a reader, I find that disingenuous. As a writer, I find it to be cowardly. If you are afraid readers won't enjoy your books if the love interest isn't a tan white man, then there might be a bigger problem.

- Dialogue in this book was jarringly modern, for me personally. The world felt contrary to the dialogue, what little of it we did see, and I didn't particularly enjoy any of the dialogue.

- Felt recycled from several YA books I read over the last decade (i.e. Divergent, ACOTAR, Red Queen, Eragon, Hunger Games). I can't quite place it, but the story almost didn't even feel comfortable in it's own world.

- Sexual encounters were uncomfortable to read, not because I dislike open-door scenes, but because it was awkwardly written. There was one specific phrase used about an arousal that made me cringe and wish I could unread it to this day. The intimacy, if you can call it that, was deeply unsexy and perhaps that's because the characters seem like they were originally intended to be YA, but I felt a little too "old" to be reading it at times.

- The academy/program makes no sense. They are building an army yet are totally fine if these kids people unalive each other in training or out of training. It's a strange concept.

- The MC's strengths are utilized sometimes and then forgotten completely other times. She isn't a particularly interesting character once she develops her crush on the LI, and lost my attention about halfway through the book. Once I reached the end, I didn't really care how her story was going to end (enough to read any more books) because her depth was so limited and her main focus was on her romance, which was poorly developed. Her background skills exist merely for the sake of info dumping about the world to force feed exposition to the readers.

- Which brings me to...the author doesn't seem to respect the reader's intelligence enough to allow them to pick up on the world around them. Everything is force-fed as mentioned from the opening scene. Fantasy is difficult with world-building and it can be difficult to avoid info-dumping, but it was handled so poorly that as a reader I was either given too much information at once which was immediately forgotten because it little relevance to anything going on, or any scenes where there was the perfect opportunity to provide the reader with information about the world (such as classes, etc.), the MC whose head we live in, was focused more on longing for the LI. This was distracting and clearly used to show the main point of the story was a vehicle for romance. The backdrop was a fantasy world which was lackluster and limited by the MC's viewpoint.

Somewhere in between:
- There is some "disability" rep by an "own voice" author, however there were several moments where the character's physical disability was almost forgotten, or brushed off as "you can overcome this if you just push through it and keep going" which I have read other readers' responses who share this same disability to note that it was frustrating to read represented in a way that made it seem like it was something to "just be overcome". Not to mention the syndrome seemed to completely disappear during rough sexual encounters which was uncomfortable and disappointing to read. 

This book inspires people to try regardlessof your flaws

between how Violet figures a way to scale the gauntlet to her claiming her dragons

and finds her place in the complicated ethics or surviving a school. Where you either learn to fly or die trying

I would rate this higher if the romance wasn’t rushed and the author didn’t write. Like. This.