I’ve been asking that question myself ever since I finished the book. It has amazing world building and I was impressed right away by its complicity, especially on the cultural and religious part of the story. Ancient fire-breathing dragon, called The Endless One, is awakening from the Abyss after a thousand years and is raising his army to take over the world from humans. In the Eastern lands, Tane trains to become a Miduchi – a rider of water dragons and skilled fighter. Ead has left her country and the Orange Tree 8 years ago in order to protect Sabran the Ninth, Queen of Inys, who rules in the West. The Legend says all Berethnet queens are descendands from Cleonid, known as as the Mother in Priory, who captured the Nameless One with two jewels of power. Ead’s powers are getting weaker the longer she is away from the Tree and now she needs them the most as evil awakens. Rulers and fighters from every corner of continent will have to unite and get over their past conflicts, or else, they wont stand a chance against what is after their lands. Inys has to accept the help of water dragons and their riders and the jewels must be found, if they want to have any chance in defeating the army of the dragons. 

The story is branching in a lot of different directions, exploring multiple different religious concepts and mythologies of certain cultures. I’ve really enjoyed reading about the past of the continent, legends about past rulers and their overlapping in interpretations of different cultures. A lot of things turned out differently than myths interpreted, and I think this story beautifully captures differences in interpretations of legends/past for different cultures. This book brings a highly epic note to itself and I immensely enjoyed reading about dragons, wyrms and magicians, as well as people from the entire contintent fighting together against one common enemy. 

Well, putting aside how much I loved the world building, the plot and pacing were pretty weak. I remember I desperately wanted to like this book, like, on multiple occasions I had the urge to DNF it, but I pushed myself to finish it, even though it was really boring and I wanted nothing more than to put it down. For a book this long, things are definitely moving too slow. First it took me about 300 pages just to get used to the setting and figure what was the story about, and then there is a really, really huge part of it that covers nothing more than people travelling around and possibly some fights or unravellings. Author took a lot of time to build the tension for the final battle, but after so much going around I simply wanted everything to be over. So that 5-minute big battle did not impress me the way it was supposed to, really. 

This book features an impressive number of characters, but I found myself not caring for any of them. Okay maybe Ead and Sabran. Ead is really badass and her journey was interesting and I kind of spent half of the book praying for her and Sabran to end up together. I liked Tane, but she seemed important at the beginning of the book and then just lowkey nothing happened with her until the very end, so there isn’t much to like about her except she’s cool and rides a cute dragon. 

I’m apologizing if this review sounds like a 12-year-old wrote it, but I’m having a headache from all the mixed feeligns this book brought me. 

“To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.”