~ eARC provided by NetGalley

I'm not even sure where to begin with this review, because this book was a piece of art! This world Lam created is rich with such a unique magic system and brilliant characters you'll instantly love. Throughout these pages, I was completely hooked, even when the tension dipped down for a brief period. This dip doesn't mean it was necessarily bland, it was a dedicated space to develop the characters and let them lean into each other a little and I was grateful to see these characters grow in that space. Snarky and mysterious side characters emerge here too, creating more depth and expanding the plot.
As an avid lover of the Elder Scrolls franchise, the world in Dragonfall echoed that intensity and immediately I felt comfortable stepping into this setting. The relationship that builds between Everen and Arcady resembled that of Violet and Cyrus in Gina Chen's 'Violet Made of Thorns '- they are bound by more that just circumstances too - so if that was something you loved, this book is perfect for you.

Dragonfall caught my attention, as I loved The Inheritance Cycle. The teens I work with love any dragon series and this one will be a HUGE hit in today’s culture. Integrating a queer enemies to lovers story, with dragons, was genius! The story starts off with strong world building, which even though was a bit confusing, came together for me after the first few chapters. I loved the changing POV’s and was glad the book didn’t have too many - two or three feel about right to me in any book I read.

Thanks to the author for helping the world to become a safer place for young people who identify as queer. This story will stand out in youth fantasy, and more future books will try to copy the same themes. I encourage all libraries to stock a copy of this book - the waiting list will be LONG! Thanks to the publisher via NetGalley for this arc. I read this voluntarily and all reviews are my own. Review to be posted in accordance with publisher’s recommendations.

Laura weaves an intriguing world where humans still live off the magic they steal from the dragons. Everen is determined to save his race but this becomes harder the more time he spends with Arcady who will do everything he can, to be accepted into the world which turned on his grandfather for something he was falsely accused of. He believes that once he is accepted into the academic world, he will he able to find proof of his grandfather's innocence. He didn't plan on Everen being tied to his spell and the attraction that builds between them.

The magic system is somewhat complex and the world building is intense, sometime requiring a re-read to fully understand. She puts together a perfect slow-burn romance that entices and I love how she explores the angst that Everen feels when he draws closer to having to choose between the dragons and Arcady, and ultimately the human world as it exists. Cassia and Sorin are such strong characters, I hope to see more of them in the next book.

And that penultimate chapter? Absolutely jaw-dropping and leaves you needing the next book immediately!

This book is definitely one of my reading highlights this year.

I adored the characters, they were all very well written. Each POV served a purpose, so it never felt like too much or unnecessary.
Everen had a lot of character development in this, often aided by the plot, and became a person I, as a reader, could root for.
My poor Arcady has been through so much already and yet somehow still manages to hope. I just know they’re gonna be put through the wringer even more in the next book and want to take them away from the author to protect them. I really enjoyed seeing the relationship between them and Everen progress.
Sorin… my main feelings about her are pity for being in an abusive relationship and being manipulated so thoroughly. I hate it and want her to come into her own, to stand up for herself and be free.
I cannot say much about Cassia, at this point pretty much all of her POV chapters were to drive the story forward, not to get to know her better, but I feel like I might end up liking her.
The major side characters were mostly three-dimensional as well and very well written. I usually either loved or hated them.
The plot was great too, I suspected a certain person to be the “big bad” from the beginning. It all was very captivating, exciting and heartbreaking. There is so much manipulation going on behind the scenes, I feel like we cannot trust anyone.
The world building was strong and believable and super interesting, especially the mythology and religions of the different countries and worlds. The country this book is set in seems pretty queernormative (I am HERE for it!), I especially like that people introduce themselves with their pronouns.
Also, we get many disabled characters, including Arcady, whose hearing is impaired.

I also really enjoyed this book purely on a language based level. I loved that people use a honorific in the third person (They/Them) similar to many other languages, my own first language (German) included.
I really like that nearly everyone seems to speak the local sign language and casually uses it while simultaneously speaking out loud or simply to introduce one’s pronouns.
The author worked with a linguist on parts of this book and it really shows, this is great!

I cannot wait to read book two, I need it immediately. :D

Thanks so much for the arc! This book really had the power to get me out of my reading slump. It was soo good. I’m usually not a fan of romance in fantasy but I’m this book it didn’t feel pushed on you. I didn’t try to be something that it wasn’t. Everin and Arcady gripped from the first minute and didn’t let me go. I can’t wait to read more of them and this author. Definitely getting a physical copy of this to annotate and love. Thanks again for the arc.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, Thank You NetGalley for the e-ARC.

I saw dragon on the cover and I was like "This will be my next jam" and turned out I was right. First of all, since it was an epic fantasy I need long time to grasped the things out there. Dragons, in brink of extinction, a thief with, I'd say, having this heroic traits. and queer-romance!

20 first pages got me like, submerged into the story. I love Everen more than Arcady. His POV told me everything I was dying to know about the dragons and their history. The romance was a slow burn one but it was thick. I'm a romantasy sucker so it was just okay for me.

The writing was good, poetic and lengthy. There were not much dialogues. I'm not a fan, but since it was the first book of an epic fantasy series, I'll go with just okay.

This book left me with both excitement and confusion. It left me a big hole in my chest with the ending, at the same time it left my head puzzled. So, in the end, I'd go back to reread this and replaying all the scenes in my head to help me understand the book more.

Thank you NetGalley, Publisher and Author for the e-ARC. This book is expected to be published on May 2, 2023

“For if there was one thing I’d learned in my life, it was that knowledge was power. Knowledge was escape. Books were thresholds, and you could cross them and leave yourself behind, or use what you found inside to transform into someone else”
Dragons? Check
Diverse characters? Check
Enemies to something more? Check
A magical heist? Check!
Amazing worldbuilding? Check
Magic system that makes sense? Check
Multiple POVs? Check
Sign Language integrated into a whole society’s communication structure? Check

Honestly this book drew me in with the stunning cover and then kept me enthralled from page one! The opening words in the prologue, to the final words at the end of the book left me wanting more. The world building was exceptional, setting the stage for what I believe will be truly epic second and third books, the magic system had rules in place to keep things balanced & more importantly make sense, almost more than any other magic system I’ve ever read about this one explained the costs of using magic & how you need to replenish your energy if you don’t wish to perish. It almost felt like this book was written by two different people because the POVs in this are told from such distinctively different perspectives & writing styles, but I promise it makes sense once you get to the end of the book, it did occasionally throw me out for a few seconds though during the switches. I liked that they had their own chapters & they didn’t go back & forth within the same chapters. Everen & Arcady are characters I desperately want to meet & be friends with, both for different aspects of their personalities & both for their intelligence. I loved the Queer rep with Arcady, & how beautifully they explained why they are the way they are. I loved Everens instant acceptance of how people portrayed & chose to represent themselves. There was no fanfare, it just happens to be a world where gender & sexuality are fluid & no one cares, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the real world was the same? All in all a brilliant book & I cannot wait for the next book to see where it all goes! Thank you so much to the author and Netgalley for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review, this truly was a joy to read.

🐉 ARC REVIEW 🐉

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Dragonfall by L. R. Lam
Publishing May 2, 2023

⚔️ Gender Fluid MC
⚔️ Forced Proximity
⚔️ Enemies to Lovers
⚔️ Multiple POVs
⚔️ A HEIST

When I first started Dragonfall, I was a bit confused. We are thrown into the world, and it takes a bit to get to the background story and to really understand the world.
However, once I begin to really understand how the world operated and the background stories of the characters, I fell in love with this story.
I love Everen and Arcady. I loved following along as they got to know each other and learning as they did.
The magic system and world is very unique. It is very different than anything I have read before. Also, there are dragons, which are one of my absolute favorite things to have in a fantasy series.

Overall, this is a 5 star read for me! I really liked Dragonfall, and I would recommend it to any fantasy lover.

DNF

This was very much not for me. I requested because I've loved Lam's past works (especially Goldilocks and the Pacifica duology), but this was too far outside my wheelhouse. The writing for Everen was very "we're going to a Ren Faire, put on an accent" and the POV of Arcady was a bunch of in-world gobbledygook that I absolutely needed a glossary for. I couldn't do it.

Initially, I was very excited to be approved for an ARC of L.R. Lam’s Dragonfall. I mean fantasy novel with prophecies and dragons. What’s not to like about that? Unfortunately, very early on, it was apparent that the book wasn’t for me. Arcady and Everen’s perspectives started the story, and, even though events were happening—and it should have been exciting with as quickly as it occurred and for how pivotal the moments were—I was never as interested in it as I should have been. I’m just not the right reader for the story.

This copy of the book was provided by the publisher (DAW) via NetGalley for this review, thank you!

Oh, man. I had a /journey/ with this book. And while in the end I loved it and am excited for the sequels (this is going to be a full trilogy? fantastic!), this is undoubtedly the kind of story with a niche rather than mass appeal. I imagine that a large part of whether you like this book will come down to what you're expecting going in, so I'm going to do my best to lay out who this could be for and what issues might put you off. Personally, it's going on my "books I really like and am happy to revisit but that have some aspects that make them hard to recommend to most people I know" mental shelf.

This is a character-focused high fantasy story with a romantic throughline at its emotional heart. It has dragons, magic, a boatload of fantasy and romance tropes, and a carefully crafted society with a refreshingly queernormative take on gender and sexuality. The POV alternates between a standard first person perspective (this being Arcady, the human lead) and a first person epistolary (told by Everen, the dragon lead, to Arcady) with a few scattered chapters from other characters that use the more traditional third person.

All individual aspects of this story speak to me. I simply can't help it -- I love me some traditional fantasy stories, and some dragons, and unusual POVs, and seeing how gender can be experimented with in fiction, and having a good, trust issues-riddled romance at the center of it all. The story tropes are the ones I like, and the main characters are endearing.

The make-or-break point is going to be the writing itself. It's not intricate, but it's also not easy and flowing: it's blunt, often purposely choppy in style, and written as if the characters and the world's history are already familiar to the reader. Some worldbuilding ideas are not tackled clearly or are explained paragraphs or entire chapters too late, and some character actions and thoughts are inferred rather than shown on-page, to the detriment of flow. It's one of only a handful of novels I have ever read where I think the story needed, quite consistently, /more/ exposition on a line-to-line level. It also has a large clustering of a lore and history dropped in the opening sections that desperately needed to be better arranged because it kept interrupting character actions at illogical times. I very nearly DNFed the story during my first read because, in addition to the unusual writing, the opening leg of the story involves individual characters wandering around and thinking to themselves, and pure introspection does not work well with the writing style. (The writing shines best and brightest when the main characters are interacting.)

As an example of how bad I found the issue at first, there's a scene in an early chapter where an assassin character has an exchange with a noble after killing somebody. This scene is so light on line-by-line information that I had absolutely no idea what the relationship was supposed to be between the noble and the assassin or what kind of emotion their conversation was trying to convey.

Why, then, did I end up liking this book quite a lot? Well. That's the fun part!

After my frustration with those opening chapters, I put the book down for a day and thought about what the story might be trying to do. Then, I restarted it from the beginning again, but with two new vantage points: knowledge of most basic concepts of the world (knowing what seals are, what a preterit form is, what drakines mean to our main characters, etc.), and assuming that the narration would only bother to tell the reader things that the characters themselves consider important, even if that focus strongly conflicts with what the reader needs to know. And with that approach, the book suddenly wasn't frustrating at all. I was able to get into the world and blow through the rest of the journey, enjoying everything along the way.

All of this is to say that Dragonfall is a book that might throw some people with its style -- but one that appeals to me and is going to be a delight to reread later. I'm attached to our leads now, I already have an itch to go back to a few of the big scenes, I feel like I have a handle on the world, and I'm ready for more dragons!

This review of "Dragonfall" was provided in exchange for an advance review copy through NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this opportunity.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review - thank you netgalley!

I found the very beginning of this book a little hard to really get into, but once I'd got the world building underway and the characters were growing on me I really could not put it down. It is well written, has aspects that are refreshing and unique, and the characters are likeable and easy to root for. I am really excited to see where this story goes - for me there is potential for the next book to be even more gripping!

I can see why this hit a top spot as an anticipated read for the year - I think I'm going to have to pick up a physical copy for my shelf!

I got a free copy through Netgalley, this in no way affected my review.

Dragonfall was a mix of stuff I really liked and stuffy I really don’t like in a book, so that’s why it only has 3 stars.

The world building and writing are amazing and it really helps you get right into the story, but I feel like I had some catching up to do with all the lore and events that happened in the past, which took me out of the story at times. It’s also a case of being tossed right into the book, as to where I prefer to gently go into a new world and book.

The plot and premise sounded amazing, but I feel like the main plot was treated more as a side plot and there was other stuff going on that the author put more on the foreground.

Arcady and Everen were both very enjoyable characters, but I didn’t really feel the spark between them other than the bond that they share, but I can see how that’s only an issue for me. Romance in fantasy hasn’t been hitting it for me lately, so I really feel like others will sed more chemistry between them.

Ok this book may not be for everyone because of how its written prose wise but I liked it overall! It just was a little hard to grasp at times!

It obviously is about a dragon - the last of his kind! The magic system is really cool and we do get a dragon POV!!!! And a prophecy! If those things appeal to you, I think you'd like this book as well despite the prose - or maybe even love it because of the prose. Give it a shot if you like dragons is all I can really say.

Thank You to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC to read in exchange for this review.

I want to start by saying that I was excited to see the approval of this ARC on my NetGalley shelf, but I hate to say that I had to DNF at about 25%. I realized within the first two chapters that this book was not going to be it for me. The dragon Everen’s POV is honestly what did me in, I understand the need to differentiate the POV’s voice but it was jarring and hard for me to read in a way that made sense. There were some words and phrases that sounded out of place, or like the author was trying a bit too hard to make the dragon sound far more intelligent than a human. There was also the issue of Everen’s POV being like a diary entry to Arcady, it just didn’t work well for me when Arcady’s perspective was not also written in that style.

I think that the magic system and world system were both interesting and well-done concepts, but I couldn’t get very far in to really see what all the author did with them. It felt like these two characters had no goal or anything that we as readers were seeing them work towards. And if there was it was taking a little too long to reveal it.

I think that this book could be an excellent read for someone else, it just wasn't one for me.

This book has such promise. I will list what I loved and what could use some work in my opinion.

What worked:

-I loved Everens POV. The side of the dragon versus the humans.
-I like the genderfluid aspect. It really shows that it isn't that hard. It did take a little to get used to but I didn't find it a deterent.
-Sorin's additional POV with magnus to add the 3rd part of the story. Really adds to the suspense of not everything is as it seems.
-thought it had a strong end. Tied together more or less and set up the next book well.

What I didn't love:
-not enough world building. More background info on Arcady. Enough to make their motivations make sense. There was more thrown in at the very end but I think it needed to happen earlier and with more detail. There was too much of a focus on their feelings but I found I didn't really care about them until the end. Which made it hard to pick up the book.
-I know Arcady wanting to go to school is the point of the heist, but it was mentioned so infrequently that it felt like an afterthought. I'm guessing it will be a bigger plot point in the sequel, but for this book it just felt thrown in along with finding out that her family member wasn't evil.
-too much focus on their feelings for each other and not enough in the world and what was going on. It was so close but I found it lacking just a little.

Overall I think it is a solid 3.5 stars. It stumbled a little in the beginning but I was drawn in enough to still be excited for the next book.

Dragonfall is in the middle for me when it comes to ratings. I read a lot of dragon fantasy and I do not feel this book really did anything new with dragons and it was a bit slow going. This does not mean that the book is bad, I am just a dragon snob! I did like the writing and the characters were good, I just wanted more.

In centuries past humans and dragons lived together.. until the dragons were betrayed and exiled to a dying realm. Now humans worship those long distant memories of dragons as gods and the dragons are struggling to manipulate prophecy to find a way back to their home world.
Dragonfall is told, mainly, through the pov of Arcady, a thief struggling to survive in Vatra. She wants only to steal enough to pay her way into the Citadel for an education and a chance to redeem her family's history.
The other main pov is the dragon Everen. Torn through a rip in the veil from his dying world to Arcady's, her may be able to fulfill a dragon prophecy that will bring his brethren home.
But the two are also linked, and in order for Arcady to pull off her greatest heist she'll need Everen's help and he needs her assistance to complete their bond.
But of course nothing is as simple as that....

This book was AMAZING! Both Arcady and Everen were interesting, complex characters, and well written. Both the human and dragon worlds were beautifully crafted with interesting histories.
There was just so much to love about this - magic, two potential foes warily working together, a heist in the making, a shady religious order (the third, lesser used pov comes from a member of this sect), Arcady's desire to clear her family name and get some revenge while she's at it... and all entwined together without dropping a beat.
And DRAGONS!

If you enjoy any of these things, so yourself a favor and pick this one up.

DNF @ 31%

I have found this to be a mix of boring and annoying. I don't particularly enjoy either main character, and I don't like the "make him love you then kill him" dilemma or enemies-to-lovers dynamic that's currently being set up.

Bottom line: An unremarkable read for me, but may be enjoyed by those who like reading all the popular tropes and writing formulas.

This ticks all the boxes for your standard YA or NA book being written these days: MC with a tragic past, trying to claw their way through the world to overcome some injustice, untrusting of others, a fighter, miserable and mean, in comes a hot guy who is supposed to hate and kill MC, they hold knives to each other’s throats, they bond over time, yada yada, secrets, betrayal, excessive anger … if you’ve read more than a couple of fantasy books by female authors in the past 20 years, you’ve already read this same story with different character names in different worlds. This one throws in a baffling change in POVs not just of too many characters, but also switching between first-, second-, and third-person. On top of that is piled a preachy focus on gender choice, adding more confusion about who is being spoken of with the prevalent use of “Their” and a reluctance to describe characters so that it’s difficult to imagine the scenes with detail, causing extra work for the reader. Yet there are plenty of superfluous descriptions of surroundings peppered throughout, which can be easily skimmed over to get back to the actual story. Even with careful reading, some parts of the story made no sense to me because the actions or happenings just weren't explained, either because the reader is assumed to think just like the character(s) involved and so may draw their own conclusions about the motivations, or because the writing just did not clearly state what was going on.

Overall, I found Dragonfall to be largely confusing and boring. The world is interesting, as is the concept of dragons being worshipped as gods while they seethe in their land of banishment, so it’s too bad that the story is so lacking in originality and clarity.