Debut novel of Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennet, and like Peter S. Beagle and many others have said, it doesn’t read like a debut novel.

Overall, I loved it. It’s the first in a series, so I can forgive them for not killing *all* the characters I would have killed, if it were me writing it, because I know two of the characters I would have killed are POV characters for the next book. And one of the major plot points that was forshadowed and not resolved is centered around one of those two characters, so I expect to see that resolved later as well and forgive that as well.

I love the setting – but then, I’m a sucker for combining technology and magic, so the dragons were right up my alley.

Favourite scene: the exploding dining room table.

My biggest beef with the story was I bought it for the dragon on the front, and the dragon was barely in the story. Her first scene, even was an excercise flight around the city, and it felt like the scene was only there to get her into the story. She was really cool when she was there, but, like I said, barely there.

My other beef would have to be the lack of female characters – strange for a book written by two female authors. All four POV characters were male – and having two of them homosexual didn’t make up for it. Not even really any significant secondary female characters.

But the ending, and the body count at the end was satisfactory. I was starting to wonder about the body count, but they were just saving it all up for the end. And then they really came through.

It’s very political, mostly about relationships, and though I figured out one major plot twist between Rook and Thom at least 100 pages before I got to it, that’s ok, it was a good plot twist. Maybe a bit cliche, but it was well executed, and the characters made it unique.

The characters are some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever read, too. Rook, especially – somehow they managed to do badass from a first person POV, without the character ending up ruined by emo. There was lots of emotion, from all the characters, but this character’s emotion was all anger, he never once let himself sit down and feel sorry for himself. He was a complete asshole, but I loved that character.