Author(s): Rebecca Yarros

Staff Picks- Read our reviews | Fantasy

Welcome to the brutal and elite world of Basgiath War College, where everyone has an agenda, and every night could be your last...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general-also known as her tough-as-talons mother-has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away... because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother's daughter - like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She'll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise. Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Alliances will be forged. Lives will be lost. Traitors will become allies... or even lovers. But sleep with one eye open because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die. 

This book is AMAZING! If you like dragons, military settings, a bit of spice, a cutthroat environment and a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time? Then this is the book for you! I cannot recommend this book enough, with inspiration from Anne McCaffery, this is the fantasy you need to read.

This book had me literally sitting on the edge of my seat, palms sweaty and anxiety raging, whilst reading it. Heaped with sarcasm, life and death situations, betrayals, and a whole lot of adapting to the new environment and sexual tension between the best friend and the enemy, (which one will it be?) I loved every second of this book. A true page turner that will keep you gripped in its clutches eagerly awaiting what happens next.

The characters are incredible and so relatable (aside from the fact we don’t have dragons). Fans of Anne McCaffery’s dragon riders of Pern will love this book, Rebecca Yarros could even be the Anne McCaffery of our generation, so well done is this book. I highly recommend this book to all fantasy lovers.