I feel like there were at least 3 separate stories that were smooshed into the same novel in this book. For starters, there were far too many characters introduced at the start, even for a fantasy novel. Secondly, the scenes were incredibly minimalistic in writing style. I very rarely had a concept of what the land looked like, what the palace looked like, or what any of the characters looked like. The backdrop of the novel, for that reason, came across as very generic fantasy setting without anything that stood it out within its genre.

The title of the book indicates that the main plot will be about those pledged to the dragon, and certainly the story starts with a very compelling scene about one such person. However, it then devolves into court politics and intrigue and two of the main characters never have any particular interaction or call towards the dragon. They are Princess Ennett and Lady Mawri. Although I loved their love story and the way that it unfurled and resolved, I felt as though theirs was a story that might have been a separate novel in the same universe, given its own space and time rather than being crammed into this one.

For all that, the writing style was simple, readable and entertaining. I would suggest big trigger warnings for the character of the unnamed priest who is incredibly chauvinistic and then evil for reasons that didn't particularly seem relevant to either of the main plots of the book.

This is an ambitious storyline with many varied characters. However, I found it difficult to fully connect to a specific individual(s). While I liked the theory of a kingdom accepting all types of people living in harmony, it was a bit too confusing keeping track.
Never the less, I applaud the writer's bold approach and will give her future books a try.
2.5 stars

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I felt there was too many plot lines going on in this world. I also felt that the intersex plotline was not written well although I am happily surprised the author tried to incorporate this into a plotline. There are not alot of these plots available in this day and age. We should be advocating for all relationships and genders (or even genderless people). I would like to give a shout out to the author for trying to tackle this subject. The entire book is like a political/social statement of how our culture views different genders, sexual preference, ect.

I feel if the book focused more on one to three different plotlines instead of so many other subplots. All the deviating and intersecting plotlines makes the novel hard to read.

Nataneal (our hero) is an amazing person and I feel for him. He's intersex but identifies himself as a man. He is eventually arrested for impersonating a male. He tries to summon a dragon. The act eventually leads to him meeting our main female lead, Ennete. She establishes a village for people that are not culturally or even legally accepted in her world. She protects them as best as she is able and Nataneal joins that fight.

Overall, I give the book a 3.5/5 because I believe in the message this book tries to tell. I would really like to give the book a 4/5 but could not do so as there were too many plotlines for this to be rated that high. I would recommend this book but not as a carefree romance. I would receive to those that need to read about the books message.or would appreciate the books message.

3.25 Stars. This book started off rough for me but it did get better. By the time it finished I was pretty content and happy with the ending. Plus this book has a dragon which just makes any book better. It is so hard to tell on my Kindle, with no page numbers, but I would consider this more a novella. Also, since I mostly read lesfic I do want to mention this book covered many people from the LGBT community. There were lesbians, a gay male couple, a trans male, a male with intersex parts, a seemingly bisexual dragon and a few HET folks.

You may be able to guess by all those characters I mentioned, that this was an ensemble cast book. While some characters I would consider more main characters, you are in the POV of a ton of different people. It’s a big cast and that was one of my main issues with this book. Just off the top of my head I can think of 3 to 5 characters that were not all that important to the story and could have easily been cut. I would have much rather spend time with a princess, who should be ruling when her father is away, than in characters whose storyline goes nowhere. There were just way too many people.

This leads me to my problem with the beginning of the book. With so many characters, and being thrown into the story with little background what so ever, I was a bit lost. There were too many people to keep track of and not enough world building. Once the book went on, you get used to so many characters and learn more about the world so the book starts to click more.

The main premise of this book was really about being who you want to be and loving who you want to. In a time of Kings and Queens and being married off for alliances, this was not the norm. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I was quite happy with how the author handled the ending. I thought it was a bit clever.

This is not one of my more favorite fantasy books, but it was a bit better than okay. If you are a fantasy fan you might want to consider this. Just to add while there are some deaths, I would say there was no real explicit violence and no explicit sex.