An interesting study on class wars with a dragon twist. 

Vivien, a young woman who hopes to go to the university to study dragon languages, finds herself in the midst of a war. After her parents are arrested under suspicion of rebellious activities, Vivien sets out to free them. In doing so, she frees a criminal dragon to she uses to destroy potential evidence against her parents. With the destruction of a government building in the process, this act breaks a fragile truce between dragons and humans. 

Vivien is captured and taken to Bletchley Park as a code breaker, with the agreement that if she breaks the code of a secret dragon language, her family will be freed. As her work progresses, Viv learns the true purpose of this language, along with the inequities her companions face with the current class system. She has to determine what her morals can allow with the information she has discovered and what role she is choosing to play on the future of her country, her friends lives, and the lives of dragons worldwide.

This book dives deep into class systems, government control of its people, and the restriction of rights for certain beings. These concepts are delivered in a manner that is approachable in a YA story. There are examples given and the FMC is given the opportunity time and time again to make a difference. She has to make decisions that impact the greater good of her family, dragons, and the lower class people of her country. Sometimes she makes the decision for the greater good of all and sometimes she selects the option that will save her family, but not others. I appreciated that it wasn’t cut and dry and she gets to change her mind later, once she learns new information. 

This was an interesting tale about some heavy topics… but it has dragons (and the language piece is really really interesting).