Fireborne: 1 (Aurelian Cycle)

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seeing both characters’ perspectives on the new regime and figuring out how things aren’t so black and white in terms of good versus bad. I wanted to imagine an orphaned aristocrat who has every reason to seek revenge, until he realizes that maybe, his family did wrong, too.

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. It reassured me in the sense that there really aren’t easy answers to the question “How can we fix the world?

FIREBORNE by Rosaria Munda is a captivating read, as two young people from divergent backgrounds, their families killed, bonded in the orphanage they were remanded to. This beautifully written fantasy debut is Game of Thrones meets Plato's Republic, and y'all aren't ready for the feels. In Flamefall, the the survivors of the massacre of the dragonlords have taken over governance of a whole other place (New Pythos), where they are now being real jerks to the peasantry there. Not that anyone has inquired, but if EYE were goingto run a resistance organization, what I’d do is create two separate groups that would appear to be in opposition to each other but secretly they’d be working in concert, and one of the groups would be the nonviolent resistance guys with very clearly articulated policy proposals and a squeaky clean religious leader at its head and the other group would espouse the rhetoric of burning everything down, which they would back up by burning down high-profile targets sometimes, so the ruling class would be very afraid that if they didn’t implement the nonviolent guys’ policy proposals, they’d instead get burned down by the violent guys, so they’d be like, well we won’t talk to you violent jerks, but we’ll talk to these other guys who share some of your less radical goals and seem like they wouldn’t burn down a school, and that’s how I would get my own way in the end, if I were in charge of The Resistance. To me Fireborne was one of those so-so young adult novels that the biggest downfall to me was the incredibly slow pace of the story.

And what made it more intense was how the characters' different motivations played into what was known. This is because she centers the story on two characters from different backgrounds and lets them discover and react to the ways in which the new regime, which they both believe in, is imperfect.Annie and Lee came from very different backgrounds in their world, Annie had been a lowborn while Lee had been an aristocrat but with the revolution everyone was eligible to become a dragonrider and status was based on their abilities leaving Annie and Lee both rising stars now. I’m not ready to say goodbye to these characters, or witness whatever pain they still have to endure. I know my teenage self would have LOVED this, but its heady mix of fantasy, politics, philosophy, and yes, a dash of romance feels entirely fresh.

Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn't be more different. What keeps them invested, however, are the complex relationships between many cast members… Full of drama, emotional turmoil, and high stakes. 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. our mains lee sur power and antigone sur aela both so layered in both their own orphaned backstories yet led to them being in the same orphanage together, the events entangles their bond and loyalty to one another.TLDR: What of Daenerys Targaryen was a boy and Jon Snow was a girl and they went to dragon school together and experienced an existential crisis about their government? What if the noble government they are willing to fight for starts to lose its idealistic shine when threatened with war? Fabulous reading, magnetic scenes, and the turmoil of being a young adult expected to become steely warriors. 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. But the rest, Hermione Granger (I suppose that was Annie, but I don't really see it), Game of Thrones.