Violet Sorrengail is the third child of General Lilith Sorrengail, who leads the Basgiath War College in Navarre. General Sorrengail is a dragon rider, and is incredibly proud of her two older children who followed in her footsteps. So much so that she forces Violet to give her dreams of becoming a Scribe like her father and tosses her into the deep end of rider training.
Rider training is very much not designed to be kind to the weak, the timid, or the unlucky.
I gotta be honest, I’ve always thought the trope of a warrior society that works by killing off the weakest fighters is dumb as hell. Every army needs cannon fodder right? And just because a student loses a fight against a dedicated psychopath like Jack Barlowe does not mean that same kid couldn’t possibly learn to be a better fighter over time, or might eventually have a really strong signet power. It’s just a stupid waste of manpower in my opinion, especially given that so many riders die in combat.
Mind you I also think punishing children for the parent’s rebellion is seriously messed up, so I already don’t have high opinions of this society. The big reveal that they were abandoning civilians outside their wards to deal with zombie invasions all on their own didn’t come as a real shock.
So right from the top I have two reasons to be rooting for Violet and Xaden. I recognized Violet’s symptoms right away and I was really pleased to see her disability somewhat realistically portrayed in the story. This is one place where her being 20 is a good thing – people with EDS start develop serious limitations if they abuse their joints the way she is doing. Although I guess they have magic medics so maybe she’ll be able to get away with it longer than real people do.
Dain Aetos get a prize for being exactly the sort of guy who annoys me the most – he knows what’s best for her and and he tries to override her decisions every single step of the way. I was glad when she finally yelled at him. Never trust a rule-follower is my motto. They’re the “good Germans” who may not actually be Nazis themselves, but they make such things possible.
So I ended up reading this series at the same time as Jennifer L Armentrout’s Blood and Ash series – just because of the order that books became available at the library – and I found a lot of interesting parallels between the two. Both have a heroine who is deeply embedded in an extremely fucked up society that lies to it’s members in order to maintain it’s own power base. Both fall for a guy and then discover that he is the leader of a rebel group and both take up with the rebels when they realize how messed up their home culture is.
Also both have brothers, and I haven’t read far enough into Blood and Ash to find out if Poppy’s brother is also a rebel but I’m really hoping that he is. For that reason alone I had an inkling that Brennan was going to turn up alive – or at least a hope that he would. But it does raise the question about what happened with Naolin’s, who was Tairn’s former rider. According to the story Violet was told, Naolin burned himself out trying and failing to resurrect Brennan. So is that what actually happened and did Naolin succeed in saving Brennan at the cost of his own life? Or did he die some other way that’s been covered up?
I ended up really enjoying this book and I got so sucked into the story I finished the whole book in two days. For one thing I really like Violet. For all her hesitation about her abilities, she is supremely confident when it comes to Xaden. There is no question in her mind that he wants her and so she has no hesitation once she decides to go for it. She is also an incredibly practical person, she accepts the reality she has to deal with and makes decisions from there instead of fussing about how she wishes things were instead. And I love her relationship with the dragons. Andarna obviously adores her. Tairn seems to think she’s hilarious, who is this itty bitty human who is sassing him.
There are aspects to the this story that make me think of the old Dragon Riders of Pern stories, but honestly the power structure here is a lot more interesting. In Pern the dragons were bred by the humans and were basically domesticated, if powerful, animals. In Navarre the dragons are the ones with the power and they are the ones who decide which humans are good enough to fight for their interests. So I’m very intrigued to watch what happens with the rest of the series, especially if they ever decide that Navarre’s goals no longer align with their own.