The biggest issue with this book is that it really did not age well. Maybe if I'd read this book when I was younger I could've focused only on the good, as the bad would've been less jarring, but unfortunately that doesn't change my opinions of this book today.

This book is very much a high-school style book of its time (2013). There's your cliques, mean girls, the brooding bad boy, etc. There's cringy cursing (with 'beeyotch' being the most commonly used), the narrator uses an odd valley girl accent for certain female characters, and it all just feels very tropey. There wasn't, thankfully, too much girl on girl hate and slut-shaming, something another book I read from this era had an issue with, so this aspect of the story was more annoying than harmful.

My biggest issue with this book was its outdated terminology regarding marginalized characters, ideas regarding virginity, and its odd avoidance of the existence of queer people (which is also indicative of it's time, but it's still very noticeable now). First, this book is laden with terminology that is actually quite offensive. Luckily, these words are generally used once or twice, but it still was jarring to read.

Spoiler

The terms included 'oriental', 'gypsy', and 'slave-driver', with the latter more frequently repeated.

Second, there is an odd emphasis on the main character's virginity, from the very beginning of the story. The MC is warned that being a virgin might not be a good thing, or to at least not let this one guy/dragon in school know, because that dragon race is notorious for being very into virgins and wanting to defile them (also odd side note, but this race name changed from sunblast, to fireblast, to sunblast again throughout this book?). But then, at the end, the MC is the only one who can complete a special quest because she's the only virgin, or 'true maiden' of the group. It just feels so odd (and slut-shamey) that the MC is considered special for this reason, and that it makes her a 'true maiden'. They could've just... not. Lastly, there was just something very off-putting in this book that made me realize that this book is only straight characters. There's a special bond in the book that happens between a dragon rider and dragon very rarely, and when it's between two people of opposite genders, it means love/marriage etc. However, when it's between two people of the same gender, it's only considered as a brothers/sisters relationship. The strength of the bond is shown as intense and intimate, and the fact that romance can only occur, or is only seen as an option, when the two are of a different gender just straight up erases queer relationships. Like, this book is from 2013. Gay people existed in 2013?

The book itself wasn't much stronger, even when the impact of these above issues is ignored (if you even can ignore it, as a reader). I honestly feel as if I predicted all of the upcoming plot twists for this trilogy within the first 50%, and the only way I'd continue this is to see if I was actually right. Nothing really happens for most of this book besides annoying high school drama, and the characters themselves don't add much instead as they all feel super tropey. The only reason that this book isn't 1 star is because I was mildly invested in where it would go by the end, and I am still mildly tempted to continue to see what happens next. However, I don't think I will, because the above issues would bother me too much.

Overall, I feel like this book very much fit in the YA Fantasy of 2013 (not that it excuses the problematic issues it has now), and it just doesn't feel like a book that belongs in 2021 due to the issues outlined above. Even just an update to fix some of the outdated terminology would help a lot, but would still only elevate this to a 3 star for me at best. I was intrigued, but in the end, this wasn't for me.