#Review - Furysong by Rosaria Munda #YA #Fantasy #Dystopian

Series: The Aurelian Cycle # 3
Format: Hardcover, 496 pages
Release Date: August 9, 2022
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult / Dystopian

In this explosive conclusion to the epic trilogy that began with Fireborne, Annie and Lee are fighting for their lives—and for each other—as invading dragonfire threatens to burn their home to the ground.

A new revolution is underway, and nobody will emerge unscathed.

In New Pythos, Griff is facing an execution by the dragonborn, who are furious at his betrayal. He has allies on both sides seeking to defy his fate, but the price of his freedom might come at a dear cost. And Delo will have to make a choice: follow his family, or finally surrender to his conscience.

Meanwhile, Annie must race home to hatch a plan to save her Guardians and their dragons. With Callipolis on the brink of collapse and the triarchy set to be reinstated, she may be the one person who can save the city—if she can overcome her own doubts about her future.

Lee is a revolutionary at heart, but now he’ll have to find a way to fight with diplomacy. Going up against the dragonborn court and a foreign princess, he faces a test of loyalty that sets his head against his heart.

As the fate of Callipolis darkens, Annie and Lee must determine what they are willing to sacrifice in order to save each other, defeat their enemies, and reclaim their home. 

 "But sing me first her vengeance and her reckoning.
Sing me now your fury-song.

 

Furysong is the third and final installment in author Rosaria Munda's The Aurelian Cycle trilogy. This book picks up where Flamefall left off. The story alternates between four main characters: Antigone, Lee, Griff, and this time, Delo. Griff is a peasant on New Pythos called a humble rider because he was claimed by a dragon. Leo Stormscourge aka Lee Sur Paller is Dragonborn. Antigone aka Annie is First Rider and Fleet Commander of Callipolis Dragon fleet. Annie and Leo grew up together after she was orphaned.

The story also alternates between New Pythos and Callipolis. Lee has been blindsided. He must put aside thoughts of rebellion in favor of diplomacy when Ixion arrives on his shores with Freyda, a Bassilean princess with a dragon that is impossible to fight against. Ixion first acts are to get rid of Annie's Guardians while putting a bounty on her head until she agrees to face him in battle. Annie has no knowledge of what’s going on at home because she’s in New Pythos, trying to incite a rebellion there. Annie, who lost her entire family to dragon scourge, doesn't want to return to the days where she would be a common folk with no rights.

 

After surviving being dropped for treason, Griff paves the way for a revolution in New Pythos, but devastation of his family brings his happiness to a halt. He feels adrift, but everyone is looking to him for leadership. Delo struggles with how much he loves his family and his conscience, with his feelings for Griff contradicting the former and reaffirming the latter. It is fair to say that both Ixion and Freyda are as important to the story as Annie, Lee, Griff, and Leo due to the fact that Ixion is all about bringing back oppression to Callipolis, while Freyda has her own surprising agenda that culminates in an entertaining finale to the series. 

 

Annie realizes that a counterrevolution has devastated Callipolis thanks to Ixion and Freyda. When she heads back, she must keep her wits about her if she has any hope of helping her fellow Guardians and country regain their freedom they won 10 years ago. Annie grapples with returning to save a country that has turned against her and constantly vilified her, no matter her best effort and intentions. What's more, she struggles with her own future with Lee, especially since he's expected to warmly welcome Ixion and his plans for Callipolis. Same could be said with Griff, who is expected to lead his country, and Delo, whose family was dethroned by Griff's revolution.

 

I am not displeased by this finale. I only wish that Annie had been more like she was in the previous installments. It wasn't until she faced an untenable situation, that she wakes up and rises to the occasion. I don't care for the whole not having a family as long as you are a dragonrider. That seems archaic at best. I wasn't really a fan of Griff's for most of the book either. He has some issues, but who doesn't have issues in this book? 

 

Delo

New Pythos

It's the eve of the Long-Awaited Return, and I'm about to lose everything.

Everything. That is what he's become for me, this boy who kneels beside me as I stare down my family, my court, as if I were alien to them. Griff Gareson, the humble-rider, the peasant, whom I never was supposed to love. I look down at his damp curls, at the burns that glaze the muscles of his neck, and wish we were alone so that I could kiss them one last time. I marvel at how steadily he holds his head.

Does he not realize what is happening?

"Why did you give it to him?" Lady Electra asks.

My crime: I gave Griff Gareson the key to his muzzled, chained dragon, which he used to find Antigone, Firstride of the Callipolan Fleet, and turn spy against us.

Tonight, Griff's crimes have been uncovered even as our plan proceeds unfoiled. Ixion still sets out to bring Callipolis to its knees with the help of a foreign princess and a promise of bread. I'm closer to returning to my home now than I've been in these ten long years of exile. I should be glorying in our triumph.

But all I can think is that the one I love is about to be dropped.

The dragonborn exiles in this room look at me, look at him, and make their assumptions. They assume I was a lovestruck fool, too smitten to ask what he did with that key.

I was smitten. I am smitten. But I was never a fool. I didn't ask what he did with that key, but I knew.

I let him.

Why? That is the question that turns over and over, like sea-smooth stones knocking in my hand. Why did I enable this treachery?

I have prepared for the Long-Awaited Return to Callipolis as eagerly as the rest of them. I long to go home. I feel the absence of the Skyfish Summer Palace like the ache of a missing limb, still waking up, ten years later, from dreams where I smell the Medean wafting through sunlit marble halls and hear the ghostly laugh of a mother the usurpers took from me.

"It's been a pleasure serving all of you," says Griff, bowing low, before he is dragged from the room.

Once he's gone, Father makes the one demand commensurate with my failure.

"You will be the one to drop him."

 

***

Hours later, in my chambers where I wait for dawn, a knock sounds on the door and my surroundings return to me. The tomes spread across my desk contain the old poems with their heroes; I've been staring at them, unseeing, since I lit the lamp and slumped in this chair hours ago. The childhood comforts have not worked tonight.

Outside the door, I find a young Norcian woman holding a note.

Mabalena, called Lena, was once a humble-rider, like Griff. Her limp, her strangely angled limbs, and her lopsided face are a reminder of the punishment she suffered six years ago. Found guilty of sedition and dropped, as Griff will be-though only an idiot would believe sweet, bumbling Mabalena capable of anything they accused her of. She's served in the citadel ever since. Her quarters are in the dungeons, in an unlocked cell; there's no point locking Lena in. She has nowhere left to go.

For her, the drop was a life sentence of pain. For Griff, it will be an execution.

"A message from Lord Rhode, my lord."

Rhode has written: Do not despair so soon, brother. There are plenty more peasants to warm your bed.

Moments like this, I strain to remember the childhood in which Rhode and I were friends.

I look over the letter at Mabalena, who waits with eyes downcast, her face placid, her usual matted hair limp as if a coarse brush had been recently forced through it. It's hard to believe, looking at this broken girl, that she ever rode on a dragon's back. The unasked questions shriveled on the vine years ago: Do they touch you? Do they hurt you? The same questions I learned not to ask Griff when Julia started summoning him and laughing about it afterward. What could I do with my knowledge? Nothing. And when nothing can be done, discretion is the last decency.

I used to wonder what was wrong with me, for caring. Whether it's me who is perverse, or my family, remains a matter of opinion. But with Griff about to drop, it's a little late for my cure. I take two steps to the fire and drop the note in it. Mabalena watches the parchment burn with flames reflected in her eyes.

"How is the Callipolan prisoner?"

Mabalena's eyes dart from the fire to my face. What tearstains she sees there, she doesn't linger on. "He struggles with sorrow spells still," she says. "Missing his skyfish. But he is kind. We speak a little Dragontongue. Daily he improves; his wounds heal."

All the prisoners are Mabalena's charges, but I noticed, when I surrendered Duck Sutter into her care two months ago after finding him improbably alive in the rubble of a blazesite, that she took particular interest in his rehabilitation. The Callipolan's sorrow at the loss of his dragon is something she understands, just as she knows what it is like to survive a fatal drop, and live with a shattered body, as Duck Sutter has had to do.

I hoped they would help each other. All the same, I'm not prepared for what Mabalena murmurs next. "The Callipolan has been . . . sunlight to my darkness, my lord."

She sounds as if she isn't sure it's a good thing. Her expression is, for a moment, so vulnerable it looks naked.

Sweet Mabalena, who fell so hard. Doesn't she know that happiness is something we're not allowed?

I gesture at the armchair between us, and Lena eases into it like a perching bird. I take the seat opposite. The expression on her scarred face grows all the more disconcerted as I pour wine into two goblets and offer her one. She drinks when I drink.

"Griff has been found guilty of treason."

Her fingers tighten on the goblet. Understanding, as only Mabalena could, what that word forebodes.

"Father has ordered me to do it."

"Then you should," she says.

Only when she says it, and I feel no surprise, do I realize this is what I needed her to say.

Because I've been thinking it, too.

Lena's eyes are ice gray. Like they've been drained of color. "You can assure that it is done well, for the sake of his family. You can assure that his family is-spared."

Last time, Rhode did it. He was the one who decided to drop Lena's family and then her.

I've closed my eyes. A soft pressure cools my face: Mabalena has placed her fingers on my cheek. "Before Rhode gave me his message to deliver," she murmurs, "I saw your Griff, in the cell where they've put him. He had a message, too."

I look at her, and now my heart is racing. "What did he say?"

"He said to take Gephyra out before the drop. Take a long flight. Summon your courage, make your vigil, and when you come home-do your duty."

Annie

They intend to drop Griff at dawn, but we're ready long before that.

The pillars of karst surrounding New Pythos are black fingers against a gray sky when Aela and I leave the lairs of the ha'Aurelian citadel. On the crown of Thornrose Karst, among winter-dead brambles overgrowing their shrine of standing stones, Griff's sister, Agga, hides with her two children. They were moved here for their safety in the night. The three of them emerge when Aela lands, and the little boy, Garet, beckons me to a place on the edge of the cliff where I can watch for sunrise.

Garet. The same name, and nearly the same age, as my brother when he died. Our languages, Callish and Norish, share roots like they share damp winters and long hungers. I can't help feeling that I've got more in common with this peasant family on the other side of the sea than I do with the Callipolan elites who've been my classmates for the last ten years. Agga's barely older than me.

Her daughter, Becca, watches from a pace apart, her eyes traveling slowly from me to the dragon and back. She blinks very little, as if we might vanish if she doesn't keep her eyes wide open.

"It's done," I tell Agga.

Her voice is pitched low. "The poison?"

The lairs were still dark when Aela and I left them. The smell of smoked fish and charred leather was identical to that of the nests in Callipolis, though the murmured Norish of the squires, Griff's friends, was too quiet for a semester's worth of study to understand. I did not know these dragons, but they did, and they were the ones I gave the amphora of drachthanasia to and told to divvy it up.

"The squires did it. Aela and I took care of the muzzles."

With a squire named Fionna leading the way, Aela and I wormed our way down the damp corridor of the lairs, Aela taking each iron muzzle into her mouth, one by one, and breathing fire on it until the metal glowed and snapped. When we freed Fionna's, a tawny aurelian with deep black eyes, the woman's shoulders slumped in relief and the dragon whimpered.

Agga's eyes are rimmed white in the gray light. "They can fly free? They can fire?"

I nod. "The squire on duty will release them on our signal."

 

I ask Agga to show me where the drop will take place on the silhouette of the main island. Her trembling finger identifies Conqueror's Mound, a sloping hill at the center of the Norcian villages opposite the ha'Aurelian citadel, overshadowed by the statue of an invading lord. The Norcians will be summoned to witness and learn the lesson.

 

Griff Gareson, dropped for treason.

 

Griff Gareson, dropped for conspiring with the Callipolan Firstrider.

 

Dropped for conspiring with me.

 

And we will turn this moment into the opportunity Griff needs to stage his revolution. Agga's grandfather Grady is rallying the four trusted clans now, waking village elders, and spreading word to prepare for war.

 

"I don't think you poisoned all of them," Agga says.

 

I'm about to ask her how she knows. There were empty stalls where some of the dragons should have been, leaving us all with a lingering unease. Ixion's stormscourge, Niter, was not among them, nor was the dragon that belongs to Freyda, the Bassilean princess he's courting. Her goliathan, a great breed from the continent, is rumored to be large enough to blot the sky. The squires filled the troughs of the missing dragons with poisoned feed anyway, assuring me that those absent must only be on patrol and would be back before dawn.

 

When I follow Agga's gaze now, I realize she means a specific dragon.

 

A skyfish has breached the clouds a few miles out, her slender silhouette a gray line against the wisps of fog hanging low in the morning, her narrow wings a crossbar as she glides. Her rider looks like a tiny toy soldier atop her back.

 

I stretch a hand toward Aela, stilling her. "Everyone get down."

 

We slide to our knees in the bracken as the skyfish streams overhead.

 

Garet's shrill voice hisses as his neck cranes for a glimpse of the dragon. "Isn't that Gephyra? It's Delo sur Gephyra. We don't have to fear Delo."

 

Agga forces Garet's head down and breathes her answer. "Today, we do."

 

I feel a small hand slip into mine, and find Becca crouched beside me. She looks up, not at the dragon, but at my face. Her tiny nails dig into my palm. Beside us, Aela's amber wings hug her sides and her neck twists so that one slitted pupil can take in the dragon passing overhead.

 

With a flick of her tail, Gephyra vanishes into the streaks of fog above us.

 

Becca's fingers untwine from mine. Garet shrugs off his mother's arm. We unfold from our crouches, and Agga's gaze lingers on the clouds into which Delo sur Gephyra vanished.

 

"Poor boy," she murmurs. "They'll make him do it."

 

I remember the way Griff's voice caught when I taught him how to write his family's names and he asked to add a single more. The way he carefully spelled Delo Skyfish in a practice notebook. I get to my feet, brushing twigs from my knees. "I thought the dragonborn were accustomed to taking peasants into their beds."

 

"Their beds, yes. Not their hearts."

 

So, less like the dragonlords of old and more like Lee and me. Or like we would have been if his father were still alive, and Lee's loyalty still to his people, when he learned to love me.

 

Come back to me, Lee said.

 

And I will, as soon as I get this job done.

 

"At least Griff will be the only one he'll have to drop."

 

The squires told me that the last time a Norcian rider was dropped in punishment, her family was dropped too. They whispered her name: Mabalena. The story, and their awed horror, was too familiar for comfort. Across miles, with a sea between us, with fire or without, the dragonlords punish families in the same way. I was my village's Mabalena.

 

So I was the one who insisted we move Agga and her children here, for their safety, until the plan is completed.

 

Because this has been my concern, I'm a little surprised at what Agga chooses to say next.

 

"I am grateful for your help today." Her children can't hear her low voice over the whistling wind. "But I want you to know, when I heard he had been meeting with you, I wept."

 

There is a fire in her eyes not unlike Griff's as she holds her son's shoulder and dares to look me in the eye. It has taken her courage to say this: I can see how her gaze darts to my dragon, then my face.

 

There must have been a moment, when my father imagined the cellar he could dig and decided to make the gamble that would bring dragonfire down on our heads.

 

Agga knows, and I know, that I was that gamble for Griff.

 

I am the recourse to violence. I am the last resort. At best, I am the lesser evil.

 

I'm a dragonrider, and I'm here to do my job.

 

"You were right to weep."

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#Review - Flamefall by Rosaria Munda #YA #Fantasy

Series: The Aurelian Cycle # 2
Format: Hardcover, 496 pages
Release Date: March 23, 2021
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Dystopian / Fantasy

Revolutionary flames ignite around Annie, Lee, and a brand new character in the follow-up to FIREBORNE.

After fleeing the revolution and settling into the craggy cliffs of New Pythos, the dragonlords are eager to punish their usurpers and reclaim their city. Their first order of business was destroying the Callipolan food supply. Now they’re coming for the dragonriders.

Annie is Callipolis’s new Firstrider, charged with leading the war against New Pythos. But with unrest at home, enforcing the government’s rationing program risks turning her into public enemy number one.

Lee struggles to find his place after killing kin for a leader who betrayed him. He can support Annie and the other Guardians…or join the rebels who look to topple the new regime.

Griff, a lowborn dragonrider who serves New Pythos, knows he has no future. And now that Julia Stormscourge is no longer there to protect him, he is called on to sacrifice everything for the lords that oppress his people—or to forge a new path with the Callipolan Firstrider seeking his help.

With famine tearing Callipolis apart and the Pythians determined to take back what they lost, it will be up to Annie, Lee, and Griff to decide who—and what—to fight for.

 

Flamefall is the second installment in author Rosaria Munda's The Aurelian Cycle. This series focuses on three main characters: Griff, Lee, and Annie. Griff is a peasant on New Pythos called a humble rider because he was claimed by a dragon. Lee Stormscourge aka Lee Sur Paller is Dragonborn who made a life or death choice at the end of the previous installment. Antigone aka Annie is now First Rider and Fleet Commander of Callipolis Dragon fleet. Annie and Lee grew up together but her family was killed by a Dragon.  

Annie is charged with leading the war against New Pythos. But with unrest at home, enforcing the government’s rationing program risks turning her into public enemy number one. Annie is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Literally. She does the unthinkable which makes people upset with her. She makes an alliance with Griff to help him against his oppressors. She has a responsibility to her people, but her people are suffering under a metals test that separates people under 4 different colors: Gold, Silver, Iron, and Bronze. In the end, Annie comes up with a brilliant strategy that leaves a hold your breath ending.

Griff knows he has no future now that Julia Stormscourge is no longer there to protect him. His dragon and the rest of the humble dragons in New Pythos are muzzled and unable to breathe their flames. Those he serves want to see Callipolis brought to their knees, but Griff feels differently. He longs to help do what is right, leading him to seek guidance from Callipolis’s new Firstrider, Annie. Griff, however, gets blindsided by a new character who hates peasants. As with Annie, his story ends on a cliffhanger.

Lee struggles to find his place after killing kin for a leader who betrayed him. Lee must make some really hard decisions as to where he lays his loyalties for the best of the people. He isn’t sure what is right anymore. One thing is for sure, though, he doesn’t want to be part of a regime that hoards rations for certain people and allows others to go hungry. He can support Annie and the other Guardians or join the rebels who look to topple the new regime. 

With everything that happens in this story, it is not a shock or surprise to read the ending of this book and watch as all three characters lives are on the brink of darkness. The characters are constantly having to make hard choices and reevaluate their principles. For Annie, it's allowing people to believe that she's the villain and not whining when they treat her as such. For Griff, it's loving someone you can't have, and then making a choice to stand up for himself against tough odds. Lee seems to struggle internally and the repercussions of Lee’s actions lead to a stunning ending to the story.

Chapter One: New Pythos

GRIFF

Julia’s missing, and I’m in a terrible mood. Not improved by the weather, which is cold and damp, but in New Pythos, it’s always cold and damp. I’m gutting fish in a back room off the dragon lairs when Scully comes to find me.

“Dragonlord here to see you,” the lair- master says.

That’s the one way to make my day worse. Bran and Fionna, the other two squires on fish- gutting duty, exchange a look. We’re up to our arms in bits of fish bone and scales; the stink of the fish oil will follow us out of the lairs, and now I’m going to miss the one perk that comes with prepping dragon feed— sneaking the remains home. I rise, wiping my hands on the work rag.

Scully hates the sound of my perfect Dragontongue, which is why I always try to use it. “Which dragonlord”— I pause just long enough for him to wonder if I’ll add— “sir?”

Scully scowls. This is why he keeps putting me on fish gutting. Lip. Not to mention our clans hate each other. “The one you serve,” he says in Norish.

Most days, that would be good news. Today, I just wish it were Julia.

On the balustrade outside, Delo Skyfish waits for me.

I remember as a child being struck by the Callipolan exiles, when they arrived on New Pythos: at the ghostly pallor of the Stormscourge survivors, at the warm brown skin and tight curls of the Skyfish lords. Delo Skyfish no longer looks like the ragged urchin that washed ashore ten years ago, but he’s still striking, and at the sight of his fur cloak and freshly coiffed hair, I’m conscious of my own stinking state.

I bow low.

“Your presence is an unexpected honor, my lord.”

Delo mutters, “As you were.” I straighten; Delo is scowling at me, like he knows I’m trying to discomfort him. He’s my age, taller than I, but slenderer. “The Triarchy- in- Exile wants to speak with you.”

I hug my arms around my chest, shivering from the sea spray coming in off the water. We’re dwarfed by the cliffs above and the citadel atop them, and by the limestone pillars of karst that jut from the sea into the sky. “Did they tell you what for?”

I use the formal you, and when Delo answers, he uses the informal. When we were younger, and I was still figuring out Dragontongue, he tried to get me to use the informal, too, or speak to him in Norish, which he was learning at the same time, but I refused. In trials of will with Delo, I win.

“They want to question you about Julia,” he says. “She’s missing.”

As if I haven’t noticed.

“Why would I know where Julia is?”

Delo hesitates. “Ixion— told them.”

From the way he says it, I don’t have to ask what.

The last time I saw Julia, her lips were on mine. In the dark I could feel, not see, her smile as she bunched my shirt to raise it. She always smiles, like what we’re doing is a game, and it amuses her to win.

Ixion told them.

I’ve stopped walking, and Delo stops, too, turning back to me. His face says everything I need to know about what’s about to happen in the Glass Hall. He doesn’t say I’m sorry, and I don’t say Ixion had no right. By now, I’m no stranger to the humiliations Ixion devises.

Like being called before the Glass Hall as Julia’s peasant lover stinking of fish.

As if he’d heard me think it, Delo reaches into his satchel. “I brought you a fresh shirt.”

Most of Delo’s clothes are blue, the color of his House, but this shirt is plain, undyed— appropriate for a peasant. Even so, it’s finer than anything I’ve ever owned, and I’m likely to ruin it with muck. I pull it over my head, and when I look up, Delo’s watching me. He looks away, down. The shirt smells like him.

I follow Delo up the winding outer stairs, carved into the side of the cliff and looking out over the North Sea, that connect the lairs where I work to the citadel at the summit. Both were built by the ha’Aurelians in the original conquering, when they invaded Norcia with their dragons, subjugated my people, and renamed our island New Pythos. The dragons’ bloodlines dried up in the cold not long after, but the lords remained.

And now, for the first time in generations, they have dragons again. Twenty-five dragons, brought as eggs by the Callipolan exiles ten years ago.

Dragons for revenge.

Dragons for the exiles’ surviving sons. Dragons for the sons of the lords on whose hospitality they imposed. Titles for their children in a future, greater Callipolis.

But there weren’t enough sons. The exiled Triarchy was forced to present the remaining hatchlings to others. Female dragonborn, like Julia. Bastards, who trickled in from Callipolis’s vassal islands, once despised for their illegitimacy but now needed.

Dragons were still unclaimed.

So, with a fleet not yet filled, the dragonborn resorted to a measure few believed would work.

They had the remaining dragons presented to the sons and daughters of their Norcian serfs.

And the dragons Chose.

They call us humble-riders.

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#Review - Fireborne by Rosaria Munda #YA / #Fantasy

Series: The Aurelian Cycle #1
Format: Hardcover, 448 pages
Release Date: October 15, 2019
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy

Game of Thrones meets Red Rising in a debut young adult fantasy that’s full of rivalry, romance…and dragons.

Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone—even the lowborn—a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders.

Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn’t be more different. Annie’s lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee’s aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the same orphanage forged their friendship, and seven years of training have made them rivals for the top position in the dragonriding fleet.

But everything changes when survivors from the old regime surface, bent on reclaiming the city.

With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he’s come to believe in. And Annie must decide whether to protect the boy she loves…or step up to be the champion her city needs.

From debut author Rosaria Munda comes a gripping adventure that calls into question which matters most: the family you were born into, or the one you’ve chosen.

Fireborne, by author Rosaria Munda, is the first installment in the authors The Aurelian Cycle. Set about a decade after a bloody revolution, the story alternate's POV between Annie, the daughter of peasant farmers whose family was murdered by dragon fire, and Lee, a boy who was a member of the noble family who watched his family die in front of him at the hand of the leader of the rebellion. Despite their diverse backgrounds, Lee and Annie formed a bond of friendship while they were orphans together. They were nearly inseparable.

As orphans, they both tested into the role of Guardians (dragonriders) a role previously only reserved for the leading rulers, now open to anyone who is chosen by a dragon. The story begins with a competition to become a Firstrider, the person who will lead the Dragon army reporting to the leader of Callipolis, with both Lee and Annie rivaling each other, as well as other elite dragonriders. Lee is the odds on favorite to win the challenge, while Annie has struggled with expressing herself, and fighting back against those who want her to fail which includes fellow students and teachers.

Guardians are also supposed to be the chosen ones when it comes to picking the successor to Atreus, First Protector.  Before the revolution, Dragons of Stormscourge House, were known for terrorizing the countryside. Dragons were, and still are the Island's best defense against aerial invasions from other nations who want to see Callipolis fail. Before the revolution, your family determined your class - Commoner, patrician, dragonborn. Now, there's a class system that may be even worse where people are separated into what Atreus believes is a fair system of determining what you should be doing for work.

During the competition, Lee is contacted by a surviving member of his family he thought long dead. She is part of a resistance on New Pythos determined to bring back the old regime back to its former glory. Lee has to fight his feelings about the truth about the things his father did, and decide which side he belongs with. When Lee's new poetry teacher recognizes him for who he really is, things become even more dicier. Especially since Lee speaks fluent highborn, and Annie makes a pretty good guess that Lee has been hiding his real identity.

Annie is loyal to the current regime, and begins to worry that Lee might betray Callipolis. War is coming. Will Lee turn on Annie and their friends? Will Annie, despite her love for Lee, alert the leader of Lee’s possible betrayal? Will Lee and Annie end up on opposite sides of this war that is threatening their way of life? And If Lee chooses to fight for his birth family, does Annie have what it takes to fight against her best friend?

There’s plenty of gut-wrenching, emotional moments as Lee considers the choice he has to make. I think the most fascinating part of this story is how dragons choose their own riders and the classes of dragons that exist in this world. Ok, so I just love dragons! Here's a warning: don't get your hopes and expectations up that a straight forward romance is in the cards for either Lee or Annie. They are free to choose who they love, and sometimes it might not be each other. The struggle that both Annie and Lee feel in their relationship with each other and others in their circle was palpable and it was that push-pull that kept me engrossed. Considering how this story ends, I am very interested to see where the author takes the story from here.

Prologue
Later, he would be known as the First Protector, and under his vision the city would transform. Serfs would be freed, schools would be built, and dragons would, for the first time, be ridden by commoners.
Before that, he was the leader of the bloodiest revolution his people had ever seen.
He never doubted that he would create a just city. Nor did he doubt that the families of the old regime deserved to die. But he did, sometimes, regret the way it happened, the day the palace was finally overrun.
He remembered in particular one of the ruling families, their tormentors still at work when he found them. The dragonlord had been kept alive, to watch; his youngest son was the only child left. A boy of about seven or eight, his expression blank beneath a mask of blood. The remains of their family lay around them.
“Stop this foolishness at once,” the First Protector said, when he and his guard found them.
The revolutionaries let go of the boy, whom they had been hurting, and began to protest: This man is Leon Stormscourge, don’t you know what he’s done—but they fell silent when the dragonlord spoke from his knees on the bloodstained carpet.
“My son,” he said, in the language he and the First Protector shared. “Please, Atreus.”
The First Protector took a half glance at the child. He said, “Leo will be looked after.”
He gave one of his guard a murmured order. The soldier started, hesitated, and then lifted the dragonlord’s son in his arms. When the boy had been carried, limp and silent, from the room, the leader of the Revolution knelt before the dragonlord.
“Those—animals—” the dragonlord rasped.
The First Protector did not disagree. Instead, he put a hand to the knife on his belt. When he met the dragonlord’s gaze, it was in an unspoken question. The dragonlord closed his eyes and nodded.
Then, to the First Protector’s surprise, he spoke.
“Your vision,” he said. “Do you think it will ever be worth this, Atreus?”
The First Protector drew his knife.
“Yes,” he said.
The dragonlord’s question returned to him often in the years that followed. Even as many of the other details of the Revolution began to fade from his memory, he remembered Leon Stormscourge.
Leon’s son, on the other hand, was a detail he forgot.


Chapter 1 Messages from the Ministry
Nine Years Later
Lee
Morning is our favorite time to fly. Today, even with the tournament looming and the empty arena below us a reminder that soon we’ll be watched, for the first time, by thousands, it’s still possible to savor the city sprawled beneath a dragon’s wings. When we pull tight on a turn, I glimpse one of Pallor’s black eyes, depthless, turned on me. The line between us, of shared emotions and thoughts that are usually latent in the saddle, goes taut. Yes. Today it begins. Today we’ll rise.

But in order to do that, I’ll need a clear head. I gently extricate myself from Pallor’s simmering anticipation and refocus on the arena. Two other dragonriders fly with us, each riding one of the other two breeds: Crissa and her skyfish are in the air above us, while Cor and his stormscourge glide below, bellowing ash over the arena stands. We’re on our last rehearsal, this time with just the squadron leaders.

I lift my voice over the wind. “You’re taking her too low, Cor.”

Cor grunts, frustrated, and urges his stormscourge higher. We’ve been over the choreography of the tournament’s opening ceremony over and over with ministry officials, and every time the question of how to demonstrate stormscourge might becomes tricky. Before the Revolution, the dragon breed of Stormscourge House—of my family—were known for terrorizing the countryside; but in even older days, they were our island’s greatest defense against aerial invasion.

“They told us to fire low,” says Cor.

“Not that low. It’s risky for the audience.”

Our dragons are still immature, barely horse-size, and can’t yet breathe fire. But the smoke they produce can still burn.

Crissa and her skyfish, long, slender, and pale enough blue to blend with the morning sky, circle above us. “You want to impress the people,” she calls down to Cor. “Not roast them.”

Cor waves a hand. “All right, all right . . .”

Our fleet is still in training, dragons and riders both. Known now as Guardians, the new regime’s dragonriders are lowborn, commoners, even former serfs. No longer the sons of dragonlords.

Except for me, though I’m the only one who knows that.

Because in the wake of the Revolution, to be dragonborn is to be wanted for dead. I was born Leo but, since the orphanage, I’ve been Lee. Not even the First Protector, who saved my life and then welcomed me, without recognition, into his Guardian program two years after that, knows the truth.

That a Stormscourge tested into the meritocratic dragonriding program designed to replace everything his family stood for.

Even though I know I’m lucky to be here—lucky to be alive, lucky to have escaped the orphanage—memories of the old life have a way of intruding and twisting. Especially today, as Pallor and I circle above the Palace arena, open to the public for the first time since the Revolution. The old regime had tournaments here, too, that I watched my father compete in. Dreaming of the day it would be my turn.

I lean forward and rest a gloved hand on Pallor’s silver-scaled neck as his wings, translucent in the morning light, tighten in a dive. Pallor is an aurelian, a breed known for being small, maneuverable, careful, and the aurelian formation for today’s ceremony is the only one complex enough to require coleaders. I can rehearse alone but, really, to do the thing properly, I need—

Annie. There she is.

Another aurelian, this one amber-toned, has emerged from the cave mouth at the base of the arena, and on her back rides my sparring partner, Annie. She and I have trained together for as long as we’ve been in the Guardian program, and we’ve known each other since the orphanage before that.

It’s a past life’s worth of memories that we’re both pretty good at not talking about.

“Annie!” Crissa calls with a cheerful wave. “There you are.”

“Lee’s been flying like an idiot out here without you,” Cor says.

Pallor and I fire ash downward. Cor dodges the stream with a bark of laughter.

Annie’s lips curve at Cor’s remark, but instead of answering, she rolls seamlessly into formation opposite me, her dragon, Aela, mirroring Pallor’s movements. Her red-brown braid hangs low on her back, her freckled face is set in its concentration. I’ve thought of Annie as beautiful—strikingly beautiful—for almost as long as I can remember, but I’ve never told her.

“Play it from the top?” I suggest.

There are calls of assent from the other three.

We right ourselves only when the bell rings the hour. The arena below, the Palace to one side and the pillar supporting Pytho’s Keep on the other, the jagged rooftops, the plains stretching out to the sea—for a moment I feel a protectiveness, almost a possessiveness, of the city and island spread below. The vows that we took when we became Guardians echo in my mind: All that I am, henceforth, belongs to Callipolis. By the wings of my dragon I will keep her . . .

Today, eight of the thirty-two Guardians will compete in the quarterfinal tournament for Firstrider, commander of the aerial fleet. I’m one of those eight, along with Annie, Cor, and Crissa. Qualifying rounds have been going on among the dragonriders for weeks.

It will be the first time since the Revolution that Callipolis names a Firstrider, one of the only titles it’s kept from the old regime. The dragons of the revolutionary fleet are finally old enough, and their riders well-enough trained, to vie for a position that’s been vacant since the Revolution. For the other Guardians, the Firstrider Tournaments are a chance to prove themselves; for me, it will be that and something more.

Because Firstrider is a title I’ve wanted since before the Revolution. It would be all the recognition, power, and respect that my family lost over the course of a single bloody month when I was eight years old, regained.

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