Review Detail

Listen friends, it gets dark.

Having survived a dragon attack as a child, Isola Thaz was proclaimed to be an ancient hero reborn, with the power to save Vinguard from the constant threat of dragons. This came with intense training that gave her martial skills, mixed feelings about the vicar and the teachings of the Creed, and worries that her relationship to Ether is not from past-life heroics but in fact a sign that she is one of the dragon cursed. With trepidation, Isola enters the rite of passage required of all eighteen-year-olds to endure high pressure situations and prove herself to be free of the curse, alongside her best friend Saipha, and Lucan, who’s already broken her trust. Everything she knows is tested, and Isola’s cohort are pushed to their absolute limits as those three weeks prove to be a crueler crucible than she could ever imagine.

The isolated, martial-oriented society first struck me as Bonesmith mixed with The Serpent and the Wings of Night. Y’know, a fighter-trained girl with a complicated family and secrets enters a spooky tower coming-of-age trial that might be a lot more dangerous than she thinks, although maybe not as bad as the dragon-related blight lurking outside the city walls. Then the inquisitors (aka, proctors of this test-ritual?) proved to be the Worst People Ever and the last third felt like the Fourth Wing torture chapter, but somehow less graphic and still more terrible. Isola might be too terrified of being branded a traitor to say anything, but let me say, as the impartial observer - yeah, no, the people running the trial are messed up.

I have lots of questions about how things got this far, just how long and why the populace has supported this system, or whether anyone points out that killing teens is at odds with their goal to keep citizens alive because the dragons are enough of an existential threat on their own. Isola’s own position defends against some critique - if she, a proclaimed reborn hero, is without the power to question the system, then who can - but with most of the story occurring within the confines of these trials, it’s hard to have a strong grasp on the fabric of society overall. Stylistically, there’s also things that aren’t my preference (first person, present tense, modern language, ending Every Chapter on a dramatically dire statement), but the full desperation of just how messed up things become really got its claws into me. So yeah, that ending? That hurt.

Be ready for twists - some easier to guess than others - and be ready for stabs (at the characters, but more importantly, at my heart, ouch). This series is taking the jump-into-the-deep-end approach to world-building and I'm enjoying the author returning to a YA series, where the fantasy and unfolding relationships take center stage, and the romance has a whole lot of tentative uncertainty, and the-lady-doth-protest, and Isola trying to figure out if those butterflies mean good things or she wants to punch him (or both? It could be both).