oh boy, i have so much to say about this and basically none of it complimentary. 

this is literally just divergent but if there were dragons, a love triangle, mediocre sex, it was way longer, and less happened. i cannot stress enough how fucking dull i found this, which is wild because there are so many jarring jumps in time to skip over the "boring" parts. some of the weakest characters i've read in a hot minute, truly none of them have any discernable personalities, including our protagonist. the romance is baffling. violet spends half the book thinking xaden wants to kill her and then suddenly likes him, truly no gradual development there. 

the only positive i have is the dragons, and it's a very soft positive. i definitely liked scenes with them more than any without them, but i wouldn't say there was any part of this book that i was enjoying. if this were, like, 200 pages shorter, then maybe i could have had fun and ignored the weak world building and characterisation, but instead that torturous length has put it in the running for my least favourite book of the year. if you're going to be bad, at least be short.