Revenge doesn’t need to begin with a knife. It can begin with a well-delivered speech.

The cracks were already showing in Fireborne. There may have been a Revolution, dealing away with the Dragonlords of old… but that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever comes next is going to be any better. So much so that you start to see those with the feeling that ‘maybe things weren’t so bad under the Dragonlords after all’. And it just so happens that there’s more than one cousin in exile…

I really enjoy seeing Annie come into her own in this book, taking her place in charge of the dragon riders after Lee stepped down. And then dealing with all that comes from having to make all those hard decisions at the top. Dealing with Lee and the government and the other riders and her own past. It’s a lot.

And Lee, actually coming out into the open–while dealing with the trauma at the end of Fireborne. Complicated that. I kept expecting him to snap–and hoping that he won’t, that he will actually be better. I’m rooting for you!

And then we have newcomer Griff. Another peasant dragon rider from a very different set of circumstances. It’s hard to introduce a new main character in the second book, but I really do think it was done well. Man, the New Pythians are twisted, almost comically evil. But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous to those in teh story.

Oy there’s just so much in this book.

Tonight I’m full of confidence, like a dragon riding a gale. I am done letting these tendrils of shame tie me to the ground. No shadow is so great that it doesn’t shrink when viewed from the air.

I can’t wait to see how it ends from here.