"Every act of translation requires sacrifice."

ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

A scholarly take on dragons and their languages, with a focus on revolution and class wars.

Read the above line and tell me this isn't the perfect concept for a book. You can't. Granted, my favorite series is a political dragon fantasy with an emphasis on revolution and class wars so my tastes may be slightly biased. Nevertheless, this remains one of the most unique concepts for a YA that I've heard in a quite a while.

That being said, the concept could have been executed slightly better. Don't get me wrong: this wasn't bad. It was fine, pretty enjoyable in parts and some of the conversations were very interesting to read. I particularly appreciated the first half of the book, with it's focus on the politics of the world and the MC making poor choices due to her belief that she was already too flawed.

(I also LOVED the dragons. Which isn't surprising, but still! Dragons! With personalities!!)

Some YA novels transcend the age category and can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of age and/or preference, some don't, though, and that's fine. This is one of those books. If you're an adult reader that has grown out of YA, this one will not be for you. The characters are all very stereotypical, particularly the villains who are almost cartoonishly evil. The conversation around grey morality is reduced to "there is goodness and badness within us all; everyday is a chance to choose goodness" and that's about it. The writing style is also very, very stilted - with most lines being written like: "I tell him." "He blushes." "I say."

These aspects become unavoidable in the second half of the book when the threat starts closing in and the reader is confronted by how little sense it actually makes. The last bit of this book lowered my rating just a bit, based on a number of factors, but one of the main ones being how much of this book falls apart if you look at it too closely. Specifically the fact that the MC (the brightest linguist of her age) was thrown by

dialects?

All of this to say, this wasn't bad. I liked quite a bit about this book! I also felt a bit let down by it. However, I do think a lot of people are going to absolutely love this one. (So long as they ignore the Fourth Wing comparison. Their only similarity is the fact they both have dragons and violent students.) It's got a forbidden romance with a priest-in-training (my sister kept calling this "children's Fleabag" whenever I talked to her about it), dragons, a flawed main character, dragons, languages, and also! dragons!

Overall, I'm incredibly grateful for the chance to read this and I hope it finds an audience that absolutely adores it.