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A review by phoenix2
A Language of Dragons by S.F. Williamson
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
2.0
The story has some academia themes that explore and I fairly enjoyed that part, though, there weren't as many parts as I wanted with the characters reading or researching.
Another plus of the book was the dragons. They were nicely handled and it was interesting to learn more about them and their lore.
On the other hand, the story is driven by the main character, Viv, and her being a 'grey' character. First of all, she was not a grey character. She was selfish at times, yes, but she was pushed to the corner and forced to choose to work for the bad guys. All her decisions were based on saving her sister and her family, so she didn't have questioning morals, she was just a teenager being exploited. Also, she kept changing her mind about what to do so quickly that simply got tiring to read her having a change of heart in every other chapter!
Second of all, the enemies-to-lovers romance is falsely advertised. She never saw him as an enemy, she was attracted to him right from the start, started talking to him through a few letters and only towards the ending, and despite knowing the true reason why he was recruited, she got upset because he knew her secret and yet he said nothing (stupidest reason ever when there were tons of reason why she could have been mad about). They weren't even rivals to enemies, even if the setting was acquiring them to be.
In addition, there were many plot holes when it came to the whole universe of the book, and the history was confusing to follow. There was the Treaty that was signed more than fifty years ago if I'm not mistaken and it was pointed out a lot of times through the book, which was the result of the Bulgarian Dragons killing every human in their country. But then again there was a war that Viv clearly remembers happening as a child... I might be missing something, but also the whole social system was unrealistic, especially since it was established recently. And yet, I enjoyed the social commentary on education, and how the ones with less means are in a worse situation compared to those with access to additional educational material when it comes to the exams. And yet, were the exams the only way to divide society into classes?
Finally, the last part of the book was kind of messy and it felt partial.