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Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had received this from Netgalley an embarrassingly long time ago in a protected PDF that never opened on my reader. I finally tracked it down and for me it was about a 3.5 read though I rounded up because my main quibble was some of the choices the protagonist makes.

Maren and Kaia are young lovers in a conquered territory. Huge bonus points for having normalized queerness in a fantasy setting. Seriously, you don't know how happy this makes me because it's not usually the case.

Once a year the Aurati, the seers of the Emperor come to a festival to dole out vague fortunes and to recruit more girls to their numbers whether or not they want to go. When they tear Kaia away from her, Maren promises to get her back. Maren has always seen herself as not as brave or able as Kaia (in spite of what her dad says) so this is very much a coming of age story where Maren grows into her capabilities.

Once her people had a bond with the dragons the emperor has now enslaved. Maren's rather hairbrained, ill-thought out plan is to get herself a dragon and rescue Kaia, with no clue how to do this other than she has to go to the fortress where they're trained. She has kin there (that's the other quibble, there are a lot of coincidences that this story wouldn't work without and it does give it a bit of a contrived feel).

Maren's uncle does allow her in as the food taster to the royal who runs that place. She meets Sev, a young man bitter about how the dragons are treated and Tilin a young woman who is much more in line with the Flame of the Empire emperor is great. Maren, however, manages to get herself recruited by Neve who is key to training the dragons. From there she has to enact her plan with only Sev to help her.

It's not that hard to figure out Sev's big secret (and was a bit annoyed at Maren for being angry he kept her in the dark because logically who would trust this secret to anyone) It's a close third pov so we get to know Maren well and Sev to a lesser extent. Kaia we mostly only know through Maren's eyes.

The action is good though the world building has a bit of a weak point in Neve and what she does because if she's the only one who can do so then how did the emperor manage all these years (or maybe it's less years than I think) Sev and Maren are both very interesting characters and Maren is actually bi which I'm sure will play out more in book two.

While it does wrap up all the plot points set forth in the first book, it does end on a cliffhanger which annoyed me because they always do. That said I would read the next book (and would have done so without the cliffhanger)



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