Novice Dragoneer

A really puzzling and intriguing fantasy novel. This is a story that seems to throw a bunch of tropes and scramble them up, a weird combination of epic fantasy and English boarding school novel. I came in expecting a sunny, light YA romance and instead found a very well-written character who goes through a Robin Hobb-like series of unfortunate events that leave you wondering how she finds any time for happy moments.

It's really hard to pin down the target audience of this book. The frame story is probably a little too simple and plodding to be super convincing to adult readers - there's a lot of “this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens.” There's nothing explicitly wrong with that in literature, but the genre of adult fantasy usually demands a little more attention to the plot structure and pacing. On the other hand, many of the thematic issues of the book, particularly those revolving around power dynamics, are complicated and remain unresolved. It really seems like Knight was trying to write for everyone, and ended up writing a book that doesn't really work perfectly for most people.

I found this a very slow and unsatisfying start, but it sped up towards the end and I'll probably continue with the second book. I still wonder what this series is really aiming to do, but I enjoyed this enough to continue and hopefully book 2 will point the series in a clearer direction.