Thanks to BookishFirst and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. If you like a lot of government, a touch of war and an in depth relationship then you've got to check this out! I think this is a YA book I could easily see shelved in the adult section and can see even the most seasoned YA reader really enjoying! Does Lee have serious and lasting trauma from watching his whole family get slaughtered by the rebels who now govern his country? This book is an enjoyable, albeit sobering, reminder that people need to look beyond themselves and from another person's perspective.

the story is pitched as Aegon Targaryen and Hermione Granger with dragons, set in the aftermath of a bloody revolution.

It reassured me in the sense that there really aren’t easy answers to the question “How can we fix the world? As for Annie being a Commander, I did not get nor liked how Lee handed her that position in the end. What would a society look like that granted political power unequally according to intelligence, rather than unequally according to birthright? Lee and Annie, tight friends, both misunderstood the other's reaction--and when the reader realizes it, the game alters. Annie and Lee's new world involves book burnings, tightly spun propaganda, and a clear overclass that still has privilege over the expendable lowest class.

An aristocrat in hiding, and a former serf who meet in the orphanage, test side by side into their new regime’s dragonriding program, and have to decide if they really can leave the past behind them—and if the new regime really is better than what came before. Annie's sobs are drilling into me, that particular sound that I'm primed, from so many years ago, to respond to. Recommended for both teens and adults who enjoy a mentally stimulating novel and for those who wish to lose themselves in a world full of dragons. Plus when they were pressured, they reach out to the practices of the previous regime to reach their goals. But total annihilation is more difficult than it looks when it's hand to hand slaughter, and a few got away, or were spared--including one of our protagonists, Lee, who was born Leo, his father an important dragon lord.From the very start the romantic tension had me rooting for one pair to end up together, then another, and then it got all mixed to the point I gave up and sat back to instead enjoy watching it unfold.