Fireborne: 1 (Aurelian Cycle)

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First line from my Booklist review: “What happens after a revolution, when the fire and fury of the righteous must turn from violence to governance? I was unsure if I really enjoyed Lee's POV because just in his first POV, I was annoyed by Annie before we even really meet her.

classism was a huge aspect in the story with the testing to become a dragonrider is open to any class of economic status. the flaws of inherited power versus the complications of a merit system is the crux of the argument presented here.

It’s a heady idea with many inherent flaws and I think Munda does an excellent job of showing that without letting it become a political treatise.

I guess it was supposed to hype the reader for the rest of the series, which did not work, at least for me because I have no plans on continuing with this series. The series follows Lee, the last surviving son of a dragonlord who has hidden his true identity for 10 years, and Annie, a former serf who befriends Lee at the orphanage where they grow up. The worldbuilding was done well, and the fact that it takes place on two small island nations meant that it covered just enough geographic space to keep the story well contained without things getting overly complicated. Rosaria Munda grew up in rural North Carolina, where she climbed trees, read Harry Potter fanfiction, and taught herself Latin.It adds in a cadre of dragons to make the world a hotter place, but ultimately what saves this book is the slow burn romance. It asks the question "What happens when the new regime begins making the same mistakes as the one it fought to overthrow? i can tell that the author put a lot of thought into the complex politics because it was one of the main elements that kept me hooked to the story. On the other side of things, we have Annie, short for Antigone (love it), who watched her own family die at the hands of Lee’s very father and his dragon.

Then a man named Atreus came along and did a rebellion to institute a more equitable system, whereby everyone would get placed in a social stratum based on the results of a standardized test. But Lee has a secret: He’s the scion of the old dragonlords, who watched his whole family die in Atreus’s coup d’etat all those years ago. And what made it more intense was how the characters' different motivations played into what was known. There is such a huge focus on government corruption and its ability to make anything seem alright with the right words.Alright folks, if you - like me - belong to the group of I-will-read-anything-with-dragons readers, then you are in for a treat. This is so brilliant, and I cannot believe I'm not seeing enough people hype this title up because I had so much trouble putting Fireborne down. They read really mature and even with a romance sub-plot thrown in, it never read angsty or young, even the romance was handled really well and felt very believable. Our heroes not only stand up and fight for what they believe in, but they also make mistakes and bad decisions while doing so. 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.

Actually even more maddening to me than a lack of policy (eh, maybe not; maybe it’s a toss-up, I find both of these things frustrating) is the suggestion that you can foment and enact revolution without getting your hands dirty. The narrative truly makes you feel deep empathy for both Lee and Annie's life circumstances and gives you true pause when considering what to believe about the world they inhabit. The protagonists of these books sometimes have people around them who are too ruthless and maybe do a bombing, which is a good way to remind the reader that our heroes are moral people who would never harm women or children in their quest to overthrow the corrupt ruling state that throws people into a snake fire hellpit.Inspired by Plato’s Republic and told from a dual point of view, the story is pitched as Aegon Targaryen and Hermione Granger with dragons. Lee and Annie, tight friends, both misunderstood the other's reaction--and when the reader realizes it, the game alters. There is a bisexual main character introduced in book 2 who gets a POV, and a gay male character who gets a POV in book 3. What keeps them invested, however, are the complex relationships between many cast members… Full of drama, emotional turmoil, and high stakes.