The great majority of this book was done really well. The world building was amazing, nothing felt overly info dumping, the magic system was unique and really well explained. I will always be a sucker for magical school and dragons. The pacing was good, lots of action broken up by political machinations, character building, and plot development. The side characters feel thought out, and there was a good amount of twists to keep it interesting. 

However, there were three minor issues that really prevented this from being a 5 star read for me. 
1- Fantasy Divergent. The first quarter of this book felt SO much like a Divergent spin-off with some minor tweaks. Made it a little hard to get into because it felt too predictable since it seemed mimic the beginning plot of that book. 
2- FMC’s juvenile inner monologue/horniness. I love a good smolder and some tension and internal struggle. But so much of her thoughts were “fuck he’s so hot” (literally sometimes exactly that) that it made her read juvenile, and the world feel less epic fantasy and more almost urban? It was too modern and young. 
3- Word choice. A lot of the names sounded liked they belonged in a fantasy book… and some were just normal names spelt creatively (hate). And then… there was Amber? Idk, call me petty, but a in a world where dragons exist, names like Amber should not lol. One of the outposts they visit is called Montserrat… which is a real place in our world, it’s in the Caribbean. It’s referenced a lot in dialogue too, which threw me off. There’s also some modern phrases that also didn’t seem like they fit (“body bag” comes to mind). Again it might seem petty… and in a pre-industrial fantasy world, modern words are just so jarring.