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Summary and Reviews of Fireborne by Rosaria Munda

Fireborne by Rosaria Munda

Fireborne

The Aurelian Cycle Book 1

by Rosaria Munda
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  • First Published:
  • Oct 15, 2019, 448 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Dec 2020, 464 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Game of Thrones meets Red Rising in a debut young adult fantasy that's full of rivalry, romance...and dragons.

Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone--even the lowborn--a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders.

Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn't be more different. Annie's lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee's aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the same orphanage forged their friendship, and seven years of training have made them rivals for the top position in the dragonriding fleet.

But everything changes when survivors from the old regime surface, bent on reclaiming the city.

With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he's come to believe in. And Annie must decide whether to protect the boy she loves...or step up to be the champion her city needs.

From debut author Rosaria Munda comes a gripping adventure that calls into question which matters most: the family you were born into, or the one you've chosen.

Prologue

Later, he would be known as the First Protector, and under his vision the city would transform. Serfs would be freed, schools would be built, and dragons would, for the first time, be ridden by commoners.

Before that, he was the leader of the bloodiest revolution his people had ever seen.

He never doubted that he would create a just city. Nor did he doubt that the families of the old regime deserved to die. But he did, sometimes, regret the way it happened, the day the palace was finally overrun.

He remembered in particular one of the ruling families, their tormentors still at work when he found them. The dragonlord had been kept alive, to watch; his youngest son was the only child left. A boy of about seven or eight, his expression blank beneath a mask of blood. The remains of their family lay around them.

"Stop this foolishness at once," the First Protector said, when he and his guard found them.

The revolutionaries let go of the boy, whom they had been hurting, and began to ...

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Numerous YA novels focus on the beginnings of revolution, but few feature the aftermath, and Munda has stepped into that gap to explore what happens after the fighting is done and everything isn't necessarily as happy and peaceful as people thought it would be. The action and ferocity of the dragon battles keep the pace moving, but it's truly Annie, Lee and their complex history that make Fireborne a fantastic beginning to this trilogy...continued

Full Review (837 words)

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(Reviewed by Jordan Lynch).

Media Reviews

Booklist (starred review)
This series opener thrills with dragon action, from aerial tournaments to wartime battles...a near-perfect work of high fantasy with wide appeal.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
From the beginning, this book pulls readers in with political intrigue and action...The world is well fleshed out and believable...Full of drama, emotional turmoil, and high stakes.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Munda seamlessly moves between breathless action and an unflinching examination of horrors inflicted in pursuit of noble ideals, and the difficulty of escaping cycles of power and violence.

School Library Journal (starred review)
Recommended for both teens and adults who enjoy a mentally stimulating novel and for those who wish to lose themselves in a world full of dragons.

Author Blurb Kristen Ciccarelli, internationally bestselling author of The Last Namsara
It's been a long time since a book made me this happy. Fireborne is my new favorite dragon book.

Author Blurb Rachel Hartman, New York Times bestselling author of Seraphina
Fireborne is everything I want in fantasy.

Reader Reviews

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Beyond the Book



Fireborne: Rosaria Munda's Influences

Rosaria Munda author photo Fireborne, the first book in The Aurelian Cycle trilogy, features a society that is restructuring after a political revolution, in which a select few citizens become dragon-riding warriors that protect the nation. This is the debut novel for author Rosaria Munda, who first conceived of the idea while listening to an audiobook about the Blitz, the nighttime bombing raids on London during World War II. She imagined a story with a focus on planes and aerial battles, but at that point, Munda describes the idea as "Ender's Game but with pilots in North Korea." Although that plot evolved over the years, the aerial battles remained, morphing from dogfights between pilots to epic battles waged from the backs of dragons. The idea for the two main ...

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Read-Alikes

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