Review:
Violet Sorrengail had intended to enter the Scribe Quadrant. Instead, her mother, a general, forces her to enter the Riders Quadrant where, if she survives, she'll become a dragon rider. For Violet, who's always been physically fragile, this is pretty much a death sentence. Honestly, for many people this is a death sentence - there are lots of opportunities for cadets to die before they even get a chance to bond with a dragon, and the dragons themselves aren't exactly safe to be around.
All Violet has on her side is her wits and advice from her sister Mira, a talented rider. She'll need everything at her disposal in order to survive, especially when she learns Xaden Riorson is one of the wingleaders in the Riders Quadrant. Violet's mother killed Xaden's father, and now Xaden has the power to make Violet's life miserable and set her up for an early death.
Overall, I enjoyed this. I like "magical school" stories, which was basically what this was, and it was fun seeing Violet figure out ways to survive when she knew that, physically, she was far behind a lot of the other students. It took a while for the dragons to finally make an appearance, but I ended up enjoying them a lot too (although I did roll my eyes a bit when Violet had a "never happened to any previous cadet" thing happen to her during the bonding part - although this wasn't a YA book, that aspect and the way the romance was handled felt very YA).
I am extremely tired of instalust romances. The moment Violet saw Xaden, she practically started panting over him and his hotness, despite knowing that he was probably the most dangerous person for her to be around in the entire Riders Quadrant. The wannabe love triangle with Dain didn't even stand a chance, which made me grumpy that I even had to put up with it. A later part of the book showed Xaden's POV and revealed that, from the start, he too practically couldn't look away from Violet and all her courage and determination (even though, again, all he knew about Violet was that her mother had killed his father). Can we just have characters organically fall for each other, please?
That said, it did make me laugh when Violet automatically assumed that another character was also interested in Xaden, because who wouldn't be in love with his hotness, and then learned that she was wrong. That moment wasn't worth putting with with Violet's instalust, though. Adding sex to the mix somehow made it even more tiresome.
I wasn't very impressed with the Riders Quadrant and the way it treated its cadets. Yes, it was a military school and couldn't go easy on them, but there were extremely promising cadets who died for stupid reasons because this school was set up like a meat grinder. I was somewhat willing to accept how harsh things were before cadets bonded with dragons, but even after they bonded, the odds of cadets dying due to deliberate efforts to set cadets against each other (shouldn't they be learning teamwork??) were shockingly high.
I really did enjoy this overall - I read it in print and even listened to the audiobook. But the negatives make it hard for me to work up the willpower to continue on with the series. Maybe the only thing I actually liked here was the dragon rider school stuff, in which case the rest of the series is likely to fall flat for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment