When a girl with weak joints and no training walks into the Dragon Rider's quadrant… it sounds like the start of a joke. Alas, this is no joke. Violet has an illness that causes her joints, ligaments, and tendons to be incredibly fragile. Despite this, her mother forces her to test and enter the riders quadrant, because riders are the superior class in society. Violet must cull her weaknesses, create alliances, and survive the deadliest school in the world.
The worldbuilding was fascinating and the idea of a school for dragon riders drew me in and kept me wanting to see how Violet would overcome the trials awaiting her. By far, the dragons were the best part. I hated the romance choices. Violet and all of her classmates are walking red flags.
That being said, I did enjoy Violet’s skill progression and courage. No matter how dire the situation, she stuck to her guns, and that made every challenge all the more exciting to watch. If you don’t mind crass humor, red-flag sexual content, or obscene amounts of language, this could be your next page-turner.
If you have a friend who loves this book and wants to be able to hold a conversation about it, this review is dedicated to you.
Violet proves herself to be weak right out of the gates. She can’t even handle her rucksack, but her mother, the general, still demands she join the dragon quadrant. Violet’s sister tries and fails to talk their mother out of this. Her mother even warns that, if Violet tries to enter any other quadrant, she will personally drag her back to the parapet. Luckily, she saw this outcome and has a set of lightweight armor, gripped boots, and a properly sized rucksack packed for Violet.
Seeing a newfound friend fall to his death on the rain-soaked parapet and the child of a man Violet’s mother executed (Xaden), Violet freezes. She switches one of her boots with the other friend she made on the stairs, saving her life. They both make it to the other side, but not before Jack throws another kid off the parapet and chases Violet. She dives to safety and turns a knife on him. She has every right to kill him, and it’s legal since he hasn’t left the parapet, but she spares his life.
Before she goes into formation, Violet meets her best friend, a second-year named Dane. Dane treats her knee injury and tries to smuggle Violet into the scribe quadrant, but Violet explains her mother’s threat. For the rest of the book, Dane looks for ways to get around Violet’s mother and get Violet to the safety of the scribe quadrant, for which she trained her whole life. This makes him a bad person (?).
In formation, Xaden orchestrates Violet being transferred into his wing (like a company in the army). After a quick scare that he’s going to kill her, Violet flees and sets her plans into motion.
First things first, she has to gather poisons after dark. Ironically, Xaden and the other children of the executed have similar thoughts. Violet hides in a tree while they illegally meet, but she quickly realizes there’s nothing insidious about their gathering. The older riders are just there to help the younger ones survive.
Of course, Xaden is a shadow manipulator (because he has to be the coolest red-flag boyfriend), meaning he knows she’s there. After everyone leaves, he forces a conversation. Although he could easily kill her and move on, he decides to let her live so long as she keeps their meeting a secret. When she asks why, he says it’s to make himself feel like he’s still a good person. Maximum edge lord.
Classes continue, fights continue, and Jack continues to kill and maim people while threatening Violet. To everyone’s amazement, Violet gets stronger and conquers both her challengers and the gauntlet, earning her a place in threshing (where dragons and riders pair themselves. Dane, knowing the dragons kill weak riders, begs her not to go, as a reasonable friend might, but she does anyway.
Violet and her classmates walk the line of dragons before threshing and several people are incinerated. Finally, threshing begins. The dragons take to the woods and the recruits begin searching for the colors and types they hope to match.
Violet takes so long that she stumbles across Jack and two others plotting to kill the littlest dragon. Violet finds her first and tries to tell the little dragon to run away, but it refuses. When the other three arrive, Violet stands her ground and fights to protect the dragon. She wounds two and, at the very last moment, the gigantic black dragon saves her and matches her. Not just him. The little dragon matches her too.
Lo and behold, the big dragon, Tairn, is mated to Xaden’s dragon meaning if she or Tairn dies, Xaden and his dragon will too. Thus begins the love arch.
Xaden is now sworn to protect Violet at all costs. He assigns Liam to protect her and another girl to train Violet in hand-to-hand combat. It pays off when seven people break in at night to kill Violet and she fends for herself until Xaden arrives and kills six.
When Violet tells Xaden who the seventh is, he immediately believes her and calls the squad leader to justice. Dane doesn’t believe Violet and this is the breaking point in their relationship. Despite the kiss they shared after threshing, Violet feels no chemistry for him and now he’s broken her trust by trying to steal her memory to prove she’s not lying.
The perpetrator is executed and Dane distances himself from Violet.
She and her squad win the first wargame, earning an outing that happens to be with her sister’s regiment. Griffons and their riders attack while Violet is there and she’s forced to flee. She and Xaden kiss and it distracts her from the situation.
During the second wargame, Violet manifests incredible lightning power and kills Jack before he can kill Liam and then has a breakdown over it. Dane tries to comfort her but Xaden steps in and tells her to get it together which is apparently the right response (?).
Xaden and Violet have graphic sex and she puts a ton of things on fire and finds out the scars up Xaden’s back are from being whipped once for each of the executed “criminal’s” kids, allowing them a chance to live. She’s sequestered off to a mountain with the power professor who teaches her to channel the lightning, but not without the reader having to relive the sex scene through Xaden’s eyes via telepathy. Xaden and Violet do sexting via telepathy on more than just this occasion.
After all of that nonsense, Xaden has a bad day on the anniversary of his father’s execution and Violet takes him to bed again. It is graphic and unnecessary, but another character saves the day with the message that there’s a mandatory formation in the middle of the night.
The final wargame. Except, it’s not a game.
After Xaden chooses his command team and sends the rest of the wing to their locations, he finds out his command center is a death trap. Dane stole the memory from Violet that Xaden had been sneaking out to help another country’s civilians (the same thing his father was executed for) and reported it to authorities. They give him the option of losing some of his comrades to save Griffin Flyers and civilians and proving his disloyalty or letting them all die and rendezvous with the rest of his wing.
They choose to save lives.
Liam’s dragon is crushed, but not before he tells Violet to go for the leaders of the undead dragons. With the death of his dragon, Liam dies too.
Violet channels so much power that she ignores a poisonous wound and finishes the big baddies off before she goes comatose with a dangerous fever.
This might surprise you, but Violet survives. And it’s all thanks to her brother (who we all knew wasn’t actually dead, right?) who uses his healing power to undo the undead poison coursing through her veins.
It was a ride. I’ll give it that.