Descripción editorial
"One of fantasy’s best series." —Booklist, starred review
Game of Thrones meets Fourth Wing in a debut young adult fantasy that's full of rivalry, romance . . . and dragons.
Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone—even the lowborn—a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders.
Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn't be more different. Annie's lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee's aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the same orphanage forged their friendship, and seven years of training have made them rivals for the top position in the dragonriding fleet.
But everything changes when survivors from the old regime surface, bent on reclaiming the city.
With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he's come to believe in. And Annie must decide whether to protect the boy she loves . . . or step up to be the champion her city needs.
From debut author Rosaria Munda comes a gripping adventure that calls into question which matters most: the family you were born into, or the one you've chosen.
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Lee and Annie have been close friends since the bloody revolution nine years earlier that freed Callipolis from the reign of the despotic dragonborn aristocracy. Only Annie, whose entire serf family died at Lee's father's hands, suspects that orphaned Lee is the scion of one of the slaughtered dragonborn lineages. Now, both teens are top competitors for the position of Firstrider, leader of a new fleet of dragon riders, and their privileged position allows them to see shortcomings in the new meritocracy seeking to elevate the downtrodden and redistribute power in their new society. But loyalties are tested as Lee's relatives lead the long-fled survivors of the dragonborn to threaten the fledgling nation. Drawing inspiration from The Aeneid and Plato's Republic, debut author Munda generates a plot that moves quickly, tempering fate-driven elements of classical tragedy with hope. The nuanced cast, particularly Lee and Annie, engage in complex relationships, and scenes of dragon-mounted combat are simultaneously exciting and grounded in idiosyncratic details of process and mechanics. Munda seamlessly moves between breathless action and an unflinching examination of horrors inflicted in pursuit of noble ideals, and the difficulty of escaping cycles of power and violence. Ages 12 up.
