A lightweight fantasy without much action.
A privileged young woman risks her life for the chance to be the first female Dragon Riders’ Championship winner.
Genevieve Sterling lives a life of wealth and happiness. Her family is part of an elite community that raises and rides dragons, with her overprotective father, Edmund, serving on the local Dragon Council in their community of Starshine Valley. When the book begins, Genevieve has snuck out to watch her older brother Danny win the Dragon Riders’ Championship with his beloved dragon, Cinder. Genevieve dreams of entering the dragon races herself one day, but for the moment she’s overjoyed for Danny. Following Danny’s tragic death three months after his victory, Genevieve becomes truly determined to win the race herself once her own dragon, Fang, is old enough to ride—not just because no woman has ever done it before, but because Danny always believed she was tough enough to withstand the often deadly competition. When Edmund forbids Genevieve to race, and refuses to help her fund her training, Genevieve finds someone willing to coach her without pay. Qais, who has connections to the dangerous dragon-poaching Viper gang, agrees to help Genevieve win on the condition that she gives him the prize money. But when Edmund finds out that Genevieve still intends to race, he kicks her out of the house, determined to give her a big enough consequence that she’ll forget the race. Instead, Genevieve commits to seeing her goal through, even if it means she might lose her family. In a genre filled with jaded loners, it’s a nice change to have a heroine whose close bonds with her family contribute to narrative tension. But it will be unsurprising even to readers who don’t read much romantasy that there’s a budding bad-boy love triangle here, a wan story element that feels as perfunctory as the thin worldbuilding around it. The many, many qualifying dragon races zoom by without much interest, especially since dragons here are rather like large puppies who sometimes breathe fire.
A lightweight fantasy without much action.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9780008779528
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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