Thank you to DAW publishing and NetGalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I loved this book! I’m always on the hunt for new and exciting fantasy and boy did this deliver.

Set in a world where dragons are extinct and treasured as gods whom supply magic to humans, a lowly thief turns to magic to save the reputation of their late grandfather after a plague runs through the city. Fate has the thief, Arcady, cross paths with a dragon, Everen, from another realm where they have been banished. A half bond is formed making the pair push differences aside, banding together to earn money for Aracdy’s dream of attending university.

This story had themes of betrayal and forced proximity and I ate it right up. Great writing with really well done dual POV’s made me really care for the characters as you garnered an insight into both their traumatic past.

Laura Lam did an incredible job of incorporating a queer element to this world that didn’t feel forced not fake. The people of Vatra do not rely on the binaries of gender unlike their neighbouring countries. Simple hand gestures indicate to strangers what pronouns are preferred whether it’s one or any. Our main character is some amazing non-binary representation and I love to see it! People of high standing in society are also coined with capitalised They/Them pronouns!

Great magic systems using seals of stolen magic from dragons, dragons attempting to reclaim their once home, I could not get enough.

For this I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars!

This was fairly wonderful! I kind of wish I hadn't read this, as it seems like it's set up for a series that I would absolutely love to binge-read, and I very much want to read more. It's truly a tough problem to have, I know.

I loved the world-building and the lore of it all - a society structured around worshipping dragons as gods? Like, I could and would just read a history book about this, thank you.

The POV characters (Arcady, Everen, Sorin, and a spoilery late-book POV character) all made sense as featured characters, no notes. Well. No notes on the choice of POV characters, maybe some notes on the POVs themselves: I've seen some reviews that had issues with Everen's chapters and how they addressed "you" but I had no issue with this and actually liked the narrative choice! Is it because of long-standing residual fuzzy feelings after Harrow the Ninth? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That said, I found the Sorin chapters the strongest writing - I don't know if it's because of my own personal preference for third person POV or because Everen and Arcady's voices were too similar/not distinctive enough.

So, one of the selling points of this book is "enemies to lovers but with a dragon and a human!" Which: if that sells it to you, that's good, but for me personally, I read this book despite that; I was admittedly a bit wary about that particular aspect just because it wasn't something that was going to act as a hook for me specifically. But whether that is or isn't a hook for you, I'm happy to report that there was good chemistry between the two, so make with that information what you will.

Overall, loved the world, loved the lore, thought the character choices were strong, great plot set-up - this was a very strong start to a series that I think I'm going to adore.

I loved everything about this book, it has all the modern inclusiveness of gender roles and language.

I simply loved this story and cannot wait to read the next instalment.

I am eager to see what Arcady and Everyn get up to throughout the series.

To be honest, I was extremely and pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was worried based on the synopsis, that the story would spin out of control because it seemed like a fantasy book tackling something big. However, it was quite the opposite experience and, in fact, the fantastical concepts it promotes are what you hope for when picking up a book. It's an epic fantasy with incredible world building and characters that are written with careful development. I really enjoyed the side characters and always love when a book doesn't just focus on the main protagonist(s) the entire plot. The magic is completely unique and like nothing I've ever read before. The two main POVs, Arcady and Everen, play off of each other so well and have a bit of anti-hero that you have to love. As weird as it sounds, Arcady and Everen were such a cool ship and the slow burn was everything! They had such a complex bond and the progression of their relationship is so well-written. I even really enjoyed the addition of the third POV, Sorin. It never felt like too many characters and made the collision of all the characters in the end more worthwhile. The ending was full of plot twists and leaves you hanging on the end of your seat...I cannot believe I'll have to wait for the next book to come out. It's definitely a trilogy I am excited to keep up with.

Extra points to the author for all the representation regarding gender!

The one small flaw I would say is that at first, the writing style was a bit hard for me to get into. The POVs are written differently, but once you realize who the characters are, the styles match them perfectly and help the story flow. If you can get over that hump in the beginning, you are in for a wild ride!

Thank you to Netgalley and DAW Books for the chance to read this in exchange for an honest review!

Thanks to NetGalley for the digital copy!
I see dragons, and I immediately am intrigued. Unfortunately a lot of books with dragons aren't that good. Just lile this one. It started out promising but then after a few chapters it started to slow down pretty quickly. In the end it felt like a chore to read. But the cover is absolutely gorgeous!

A cleverly written saga about dragons, told as a record in history. Dragonfall has intriguing characters and a good plot, although it was let down a little by the world building. I'm still not totally sure how the magic works! Otherwise, not a bad read. I'll likely pick up the sequel.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an early copy of the book for review.

Thank you, DAW, for allowing me to read Dragonfall early.

L.R. Lam wrote another out-of-the-park hitter. Dragonfall is the start of an intensely intriguing new series.

I love anything about dragons and riders, and it is hard to find good books about dragons. Considering that, I went into Dragonfall with low expectations. I was surprised by the characters and the plot. The book is well-written. I could not understand the Magic system or the world-building quite well, because there was no glossary. But as this is just an ARC I think it will be taken care of by the time it's out.

Arcady's character was delightful and mysterious. Her escapades as a thief were fun to read. I did not like Everen quite as much.
PS: English is not my first language. I have tried putting my thoughts into an acceptable review.

3.5/5 stars
Plot: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Worldbuilding: 3/5
Magic system: 2.5/5
Writing: 2.5/5
Romance: 2.5/5

While I enjoyed most of the concepts of this book as concepts, something about the way they all worked together didn't really appeal to me. Overall it was pretty good. The gender system and the languages are interesting, the worldbuilding and the magic system are interesting if a bit sparse, and the characters are interesting. I think one of my biggest issues with this was the choice to write as if one perspective was recounting memories directly to the reader. "You were, you did, you looked like, you said," etc etc. It definitely helps with keeping that character, Arcady, as an undefined and somewhat amalgamous insert, as a shapeshifter and a genderqueer person (y'know, the non-binary one doesn't always have to be the shapeshifter). However, it made the romance uncomfortable as hell for me. There was also a choice to have pronouns be honorifics and so sentences would be littered with capitalized letters that annoyed me to no end. My eyes were drawn ahead of my sentences to focus on these capitalized words that repeated three or even four times per sentence. "As They walked with Their nose in the air, Arcady bumped into Them, causing Them to stumble." It gets tiring very quickly. Those are the main issues that I think will cause people to dislike the writing style, because the dialogue and descriptions were really nice.

The characters themselves were pretty neat. I liked the cultural dynamics and getting to learn about Arcady's culture through Everen's ignorance is a nice way to do worldbuilding. I feel like the magic system needed to be more defined and explained and a lot of the dragon lore portions were boring and droned on for too long. Arcady being a thief was an interesting characterization, but the descriptions for pickpocketing or lockpicking and other thief skills were surface level and kind of inaccurate. The supporting cast of characters was interesting, except for Soren, since I didn't find her story exciting at all. There's a lot of loose threads at the end of this book and I know that it's a series, but I don't feel like anything was resolved by this book at all.

Overall, enjoyable if you want a genderqueer, dragon-shapeshifter, enemies to lovers to enemies, romance fantasy.

I enjoyed this story more than I expected to. I am usually not the biggest fan of fantasy, but I decided to branch out. It was well written, interesting, and not too "weird" like some fantasy can be. Overall, I liked it very much. I'd recommend it to anyone who is big on fantasy and dragons.

Overall, I think this was a FANTASTIC beginning to a series! I cannot wait to read the others! I was obsessed with the idea of a dragon having to become human alongside all the medieval goodies and heist intrigue (big bonuses).

The points of view threw me off a little bit at first with Everen and Arcady's perspectives reading quite differently from everyone else's. I got the hang of it though and loved the predatory feeling I experienced (initially) from Everen's chapters. It added to the creepy, I-am-not-exactly-as-I-seem aspect of his character. I think Everen and Arcady are really cute!

I adored the exploration of gender in this world as well, where it is quite fluid. To some it is important, and to others, it is not. This delineation of nuance within the collective's experience of gender really fed the book for me, and I know so many others are going to relate to the queer representation.

The wording within the writing style itself was wonderful. "Braiding a narrative is not so different from setting down a vision sent by starfire and fate." I could see this series becoming a modern classic, much like Eragon was for my age group in middle school. At times, it also reminded me of the lyrical wording found in This Woven Kingdom. Very beautiful!

I loved Dragonfall overall and believe it holds a lot of promise. I would just work on the POVs for Everen and Arcady a little bit. (No changes to the story-- Just the awkwardness of some of the first-person stuff.) Everything else was perfect! I wish I had thought of this fabulous world, but am ultimately just grateful I was able to enjoy it. Thank you SO much to the publishers at Hodder & Stoughton, NetGalley, and the author for allowing me to read the e-ARC version of this lovely tome!

I rated this book 3.5/5 stars. I enjoyed this book. It took me a bit to get into it. For a few chapters was hard to follow which character’s pov I was reading. Once I got it, the book was great. I found the dragons very unique in this book. The ending was great and unpredictable. Overall, I thought this aaa great, but it took me a bit to get into.

the perspective of the characters was very interesting, with the two cultures, dragon and human, intersecting, ut I did find the writing a little bit too flowery

I'll read anything with dragons. Epic fantasy? Even better. Unfortunately, this book missed the mark for me a little. The actual plot was pretty good, but I wasn't a fan of the writing style - I found my attention drifting during key bits and found it hard to stay engrossed in the book. A real shame, but not one for me!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Great story and world building. Lam brings together clashing worlds, a big heist, and plenty of intrigue all wrapped up in a lush midlevel style setting. I enjoyed the morally gray charters and the unique magic system. Lam leaves plenty to explore in the upcoming books which I am excited to read.

My one complaint is with some of the choices made around the writing style. The intro of the book states that it is a collection of historical documents and scrying visions and to aid to this feel Lam has written different chapters from different points of view. Arcady's chapters are written in first person, Everen's are first person speaking to Arcady, as if it is taken from letters or a journal written to Arcady. Chapters from the rest of the characters are written from third person. In addition there is a lot of telling not showing in the first half of the book. Based on Lam's talent at showing I would have loved to have some of the scenes that were told to be flushed out and experienced. However, I did get used to the point of view switching and the pace really does pick up and become quite exciting in the second half of the book.

Overall a great start to an epic fantasy trilogy. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for this honest review.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this eARC!

I was so ready for this because I love a good epic fantasy! I love stories with dragons and magic and lore! And those were all really great here, Arcady and Everen? I ship. I just...didn't like the writing style. I don't really like books where the narrator is addressing the reader and I also got confused with the multiple POVs. That being said, it has excellent world building, lore, and character personalities.

I really enjoyed this book! I flew through it on one afternoon and I am so sad that it's over. The author did a great job with the plot and keeping the story moving with no stagnant parts. The characters were very relatable and fun to learn. Great read!

I love the world building! I really enjoyed the lore and the backstory. The POVs are a little hard to get into the first few chapters, but eventually it was fun when I get it. Arcady and Everen is so adorable together aaaaaa I ship! It was a great start of a series and I'm so looking forward the next book!

"epic trilogy fantasy" Three words that make me jump right into a book. I've been looking for my next fantasy trilogy fix since finishing "War of Lost Hearts." I am now currently heartbroken that the rest of the trilogy hasn't yet been released. This book was phenomenal. There are few to no forced gender constructs in this story and it's a breath of fresh air. The dragon's morals and aspirations left me shaking and the bond between Everen and Arcady was phenomenal. I want to dive deeper into this world and not surface for air. Can't wait until book 2 comes out.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

“I hunted a prophecy”
“As the sun kept rising in the sky, I knew: all I needed to do was find you again. Fate would tell me what to do next”
A wonderful fantasy story where the main characters are dragons and gender is just a label some people may use and others may not.
I really enjoyed this beginning of a fantasy series !! A thief and a dragon, with a bond none of them fully understand. Arcady is a normal person with a thievery ability and Everen is the last male dragon destined to save or doom them all.
I really liked how they found each other together in a way that was both unexpected and entertaining. Some of the side characters were more than interesting and I believe they have some pokers in their sleeve ready to be unveiled.
Really excited for the other books in this series !!!
“Once a thief, always a thief”
“Gender is both so important and yet inconsequential … trying to unpick what fells innate to you, and what is put upon you by others”