Fireborne: 1 (Aurelian Cycle)

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So many beautiful YA novels have been about kids starting a revolution, but I wanted to explore the other side of it.

Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone–even the lowborn–a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders. There is a bisexual main character introduced in book 2 who gets a POV, and a gay male character who gets a POV in book 3. But with unrest at home, enforcing the government’s rationing program risks turning her into public enemy number one. As someone who has read quite a bit of young adult fantasy, this one stands out from the rest as reading much more mature than others I’ve read recently! Fabulous reading, magnetic scenes, and the turmoil of being a young adult expected to become steely warriors.a lot of nuance was added to this and as a reader, it ultimately made me question: if the New Regime started following the footsteps of the Old one, then are they really any better than their oppressors? Tension between characters that continuously changes and morphs as new developments emerge--especially when the tension is between the two main perspectives and there is a love and fondness between the two, but the stakes are high and they each have polarizing motivations.

there were some things that i liked and some that i didn’t, which im going to elaborate so feel free to read along. With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he’s come to believe in. But he’s a swing character, crafted to do the opposite of what you expect when the author needs something doing that doesn’t make sense.Plus she was possibly flying her dragon for longer than Lee, and I suppose she would get better tutors.

However, Annie noted how he looked similar to his father, many of the Golds knew his father way better than Annie did, even the new leader, I'm surprised no one noted the similarity. The narrative truly makes you feel deep empathy for both Lee and Annie's life circumstances and gives you true pause when considering what to believe about the world they inhabit. But my favorite character was Power, an amoral jerk and guardian, one of 4 leaders with Annie and Lee. As it turns out, others from the old regime have survived and have been building their own dragon army on a nearby island. the flaws of inherited power versus the complications of a merit system is the crux of the argument presented here.Head over to Resources for discussion guides, background information about influences on Fireborne, the writing process, and a map! one moment they’re having a normal convo and the next they’re airborne on their dragons which gave me whiplash because why are we moving so fast? i wish she had found out about hin later on in the book but anyway, i still liked how it turned out. As I mentioned above, I turned the page, and nothing happened, that's because so much happened off-page. The shouting is cheerful, the [rebels] eager to set out into the night to leave gifts of bread on the steps of the unsuspecting poor….

These characters are essentially at war, and Munda does not hold back on showing you the brutality they endure and the trauma they suffer. It adds in a cadre of dragons to make the world a hotter place, but ultimately what saves this book is the slow burn romance. First line from my Booklist review: “What happens after a revolution, when the fire and fury of the righteous must turn from violence to governance?What I like about this, as a premise, is that the old regime was very wicked, and at one and the same time, Lee is rightly ambivalent about the new regime.