After temporarily shelving the series I was reading recently, I went for something different. A dragon rider story with a female-only order.

The story focuses on Aimee, who is bullied by pretty much everyone in the town because of her appearance – easily visible as half of her face and hair is pale while the other half is darker. When her uncle and aunt – her only living relatives – die of a sickness, she’s alone in a town that hates her.

This tricky situation leaves her with only one choice – try to climb the mountains above the town as doing so would grant her the chance to enter the order. A climb that’s deadly to many who try. And, as it quickly shows, this leads to most members of this female-only order having some deep trauma they have run from – because only people with nothing to lose would spend a day climbing a mountain that’s likely to kill them.

Aimee isn’t easily accepted, though – the other two trainees aren’t any nicer than the people of her hometown, though the more experienced riders are more open-minded. Still, friends are hard to come by and the two competing trainees aren’t exactly hiding the fact that they wouldn’t mind if Aimee doesn’t make it through.

As Aimee gets through her early training and eventually bonds with a dragon, she learns snippets of what’s going on in the world, including an attempt to bring a tentative truce between her town and some of the centaur tribes. A truce that not everyone supports, for various reasons. As well as rumors about the re-emergence of creatures that were believed to have been eliminated long ago. This part reveals some worldbuilding and history of the characters and what has brought them to try the risky climb.

As things start gaining momentum, Aimee needs to conquer her own insecurities or risk being another casualty.

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Read date: 30.5.-3.6.2025
Published: 14.9.2020
Goodreads/Amazon rating: 3,92/4,2
My rating: 85%
Length: 400 pages (Kindle edition)
My highlights

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I managed to devour this book quite fast, which I guess is a sign of quality as I’m not exactly the target audience, and I’m going to continue with this series.