What's better than following along with a revolution, culminating in an evil regime being thrown down? Watching how society rebuilds and seeing all the hard choices that have to be made after, of course. This - along with a fraught teenage friendship and dragon riding - is the essence of Fireborne.

No one warned me how tragic, how tense, how emotional this story would be. Sure, I don't always read synopses, but I figured knowing the book was about dragon riding was enough. NOPE. If you don't know me: Hi, I'm QM, and tragic romances/friendships are my absolute favorite. So I read this story as fast as my little eyes would let me.

In the old world, Annie was a serf under the dragonlord Leon Stormscourge. Our other main character, Lee, was his son. Annie & Lee's worlds both get turned upside down at age 7 when the Revolution happens and a new government is put into power, run by Atreus Athanatos, the leader of the rebellion. They are thrown together by circumstance, and despite it all, grow a delicate friendship & deep understanding of each other. (Most of the story takes place 10 years later, but we do have some flashbacks to Lee & Annie when they are 7-8.)

Annie and Lee's interactions are stilted at times. Quiet. There's a lot of subtle awareness, intimate knowledge, and childlike need in their friendship. They're not quite best friends, but more people who don't know how to survive without each other. Feelings are growing, and watching Annie & Lee untangle their messy past and unhealthy habits is fascinating - and also, irritating at times (sorry, Annie). You desperately want them to be together and to say everything out in the open, but you also understand that they cannot see past the old history. There are paths they do not walk - do not even face - and you can't imagine how they can come together if they both don't start walking, but to walk would be to fall off a cliff.

Anyway, in case you missed it - I was enamored with Annie & Lee and their relationship. This is very much a character-driven story, with the worldbuilding and plot in the background. We see snippets of the new society and how it works (more as the tale goes on), but the focus is not on explanations. It's on Lee. It's on Annie.

Lest you think nothing happens, there are a lot of political moments and moral dilemmas. A society is being rebuilt, and is it better than the old? Is it just a lesser evil? What is 'fair' and 'equal?' Do intentions matter? When does revolution become 'not worth it?' Fascinating glimpses of these conversations and moments are sprinkled throughout the story.

Additionally, because our main characters are trauma-laden teens who have been promised a shining future, we see the reality of war and hard decisions and ethical dilemmas. We see the range of calculating logic to emotional distress at the choices before them. Very engaging, very thought-provoking, and at the same time, full of sorrow.

And finally, the dragons. While this is a dragon rider book, the dragons do not feature as much as I expected. Your perception here may vary, but I was expecting to see more of the dragons as beings in themselves, and less as simply airborne horses. There are hints that more relationship and dragon-knowledge will come about in the future books, but for now, I would recommend the story to fans of political and revolution-based stories rather than dragon fanatics. Fireborne would also be a great entry point to readers uncertain about dragons.

I absolutely loved the writing style. Its ability to capture emotion, subtlety, and nuance is emphasized in its simplicity and clarity. Writing like this is consistently one of the most powerful for me. Let me leave you with some quotes:

ebook pg 106:

"You only deserve this mantle as long as you can be more reasonable and more virtuous than what came before."

ebook pg 213:

Annie smiles suddenly, breathlessly, at the completion of a turn, and I feel an irrepressible smile answer hers; and then the sorrow is transformed into something more, something beautiful, and this, this movement that is so tantalizingly close to flying, that's like the high notes of a violin, some mix of joy and pain, is part of that transformation.

ebook pg 221:

For a moment we continue to stand close, frozen, and I feel that threat of an end rise over us: an end of something that could have started and that I was almost certain I did not want; and worse, more terrifyingly, an end now to what we already had.

ebook pg 300:

"Much of what you'll be doing, as Guardians, will be deciding which is the lesser evil. Who lives, who dies. It will be - it should be - a terrible burden.... It will be your duty to make these decisions, to bear the guilt of them for others' sakes."

ebook pg 319:

I'd thought experience would be a kind of preparation for this conversation, but it turns out that there's no preparation for watching someone's face struggle to understand a new kind of pain.

ebook pg 332:

But surely this is different, surely this crisis, our need, justifies what looks so terrifyingly like a repetition of past wrongs...

ebook pg 361:

This is the refrain she must play for herself, on bad days and after nightmares; this is her refrain, and like mine, it is never enough.

ebook pg 367:

He inhales slowly. "Well, here we are," he says. Like here is the utter end, and he's seen it coming all along.

ebook pg 413:

"The whole point of Atreus's system is that anyone can be worthy."

[Redacted]'s laugh echoes in the empty, glass-walled room.

"Maybe one day," he says. "But for now, I'm pretty sure the point is that some people aren't anymore."