This book is kind of like a mix of How to Train Your Dragon and the Russian revolution and it works so well. 

I am not generally a YA reader and I don't usually like romance in my fantasy but I kind of loved this?? 

I picked this up to be like an easy, fun vacation read and it was both of those things but I actually can't remember the last time a book made me want to drop everything in my life and do nothing but read like this did. I was so invested in the characters, in the story and the politics and the world.

As someone who doesn't read a lot of YA there were some things that bothered me like the fact that they had teenagers in charge or their army and there's a lot of "faces flushing" and hands brushing against legs and things which grate on me a bit but that's just not my taste.

My main criticism though would be the world building. As someone who reads primarily adult fantasy, I love super luscious and intricate world building. I found that throughout this book I wasn't quite sure what type of world I was picturing. It felt sort of not quite as old as medieval-inspired but I'm not really sure. What's the weather like in this part of the world? What do their soldier uniforms look like? Again, this is entirely a me thing, I'm aware some people find things like that really tedious and it didn't ruin the book for me in any way.

But overall I loved this and I can't wait to pick up the next one.