i enjoyed the writing a lot but overall this felt too long. 

i think for me there were to many POVs and jumps back and for between them for no real reason other than to stretch the books page count. at least two POVs could have easily been left out and the same story could have been told but at least 200 pages shorter. 

i am not saying with that the the book was bad as it is just that it had at least 50-100 pages at least twice throughout the book were i was really tempted to just flip ahead because nothing was happening. 
just political drama or general drama or characters scheming -again- or men being unhappy or some kind of fight that wasn’t necessarily needed…. there were just a good amount of pages that i found a bit dragging and quite honestly boring. 
for the first 200 pages i kept expecting things to get - i don’t even know how to say it but i guess- more exciting? i kept waiting for pages and switching POVs for things to finally go somewhere for all this build up to lead somewhere. but it took quite a while until at least something actually happened that wasn’t just a relatively minor plot point. 
i think that could have been done a little bit better. 
especially since i didn’t feel like those first 200+ pages really introduced the world that well. and while the characters were all introduced and followed along, we mostly got their daily life moments instead of something… i guess more epic? 
so sue me! i expected a dragon book to have a bit more actual dragons and fantastical moments in it than instead of just basic introductory moments for basically 400 pages. 
my own expectations seemed to have worked against me with this. 

which is a bit sad since i did really enjoy the idea, the plot and a good amount of the characters. 
i really liked the idea that most people i power were female and that a lot of the soldiers where too. it was nice to have that in a fantasy setting and happens way to rarely still. 
which is why i hate to not absolutely love this book as it is! 

i wanted to love it so badly but i have to say that after finishing this just a few minutes ago i feel a bit like i was missing what everyone else just seemed to love so completely in and with this book. 

i could see glimpses of what people could love so much but for me it never quite went there. 

i am going to reread this book in the nearer future and see what i think during that read, sometimes i love a book more when i know what will happen instead having to see where everything is going. 

all in all? 
great idea, fantastic plot, well done characters but sometimes the writing/plot drags on a bit. 
still absolutely worth a read and a nice reading experience overall.