A WAR OF WYVERNS

The stakes are high as full-blown war pits dragon against human.

In the series opener, A Language of Dragons (2025), set in a fantastical alternate 1923 London where dragons live alongside people, aspiring Draconic Translator Viven Featherswallow accidentally ignited a war. She landed at Bletchley Park, deciphering rebel dragon communications for a government she wasn’t sure she could trust. In this second entry, Vivien has not only joined the resistance, she’s become “London’s most wanted rebel.” Propelled by grief over a love she’s lost, fear for a sister she hopes to keep safe, and skepticism toward her political leaders, Vivien tentatively sets out to crack a sacred, nearly untranslatable language. In the process, she immerses herself in the world of the distrustful Hebridean Wyverns, whose lives and culture may open her eyes to new ways of being. The secondary cast, including Vivien’s love interest, are thinly characterized, and some plot elements feel derivative of other popular YA genre fiction works. But Vivien’s changing understanding of translation as a tool for both communication and oppression remains compelling, and her fight to find her place in the world and the revolution forms the heartbeat of the book. Though comparisons to the popular dragon-rider romance Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros are inevitable, readers who were drawn to the complex draconic politics of Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina may find more to sink their teeth into here. Characters largely read white.

An uneven but ultimately gripping sequel.