Flamefall is a sequel that deftly tackles love, politics, dragons and more

Rosaria Munda’s Fireborne offered a surprising balm for Game of Thrones fans’ hearts when it hit shelves last spring. A complex tale of revolution, politics, and class issues with dragons thrown on top, it certainly wasn’t the story I expected when I first picked it up. Its sequel, Flamefall, takes what worked about Fireborne and builds upon it, crafting a surprisingly thoughtful and multifaced story that provokes readers to think in ways that few other YA trilogies are even attempting at the moment.

Flamefall essentially picks up where Fireborne left off: Lee sur Pallor, a dragonlord’s son raised as an orphan after his family was killed in the Callipolean revolution, has chosen to side with his friends and the world they’re trying to make together rather than his distant exiled relatives in New Pythos – and has killed his cousin to make sure of it. Annie sur Aela, former peasant turned Firstrider of the Callipolean dragon fleet, is trying to prove that a new, better world is possible, one where people like her aren’t automatically doomed to a life of poverty and servitude.

This novel also introduces a third POV character in lower-class New Pythos resident Griff Gareson, who is what’s known as a “humble rider” amongst his people. (Translation: A non-dragonborn individual who was given the chance to bond with a dragon, because there weren’t enough elite children of a correct age when the dragonlords fled Callipolis.) Frustrated by the abuse he receives at the hands of the rider to whom he serves as a squire, fascinated by the existence of Annie, a lower born Firstrider, and romantically attached to an upper-class dragonrider, he’s torn about where his loyalties should lie.

Where Fireborne was largely focused on the competition for Firstrider, Flamefall is much wider in scope and narrative ambition. It wrestles with many complex questions of class and justice, largely centered on Calliopolis’s “metals test,” an event that is used to determine a citizen’s fitness for work and society. Lower-class “Irons” are primarily unskilled and manual laborers, while upper-class “Golds” are philosophers, generals, and other posh rich types. And now that war with New Pythos is nigh and supplies growing increasingly scarce, the metals test is being used to justify which groups receive larger rations and access to air raid bunkers.

The sequel is surprisingly thoughtful about the way it discusses politics and systems of government, putting our faves at odds over multiple issues, but in ways that are easy to understand and even support. These are complex problems that don’t have easy solutions – even when you have dragons involved – and Flamefall doesn’t shy away from showing real, and often terrible consequences on both sides.

With famine, unrest, and the threat of war spreading, it feels like anything could happen, including friends abandoning one another, citizens turning on their neighbors, and the very governments meant to protect their people fail in a spectacular variety of ways.

It’s to Munda’s credit as a writer that she doesn’t make any of the problems these characters face seem easy. Each must make difficult choices over the course of the story, and the thing is – none of their options seem like great answers. Perhaps leadership is always making the best of a bunch of bad options, but Flamefall doesn’t lean on any particular belief or action as being obviously correct, rather the story leaves it up to readers to decide where their loyalties lie over the course of the story.

And though we’ll have to wait until the final novel in Munda’s Aurelian Cycle trilogy to find out what will ultimately become of Callipolis and its dragonriders, as Flamefall comes to an end, it’s more apparent than ever before that no matter how this series ends – it’s going to surprise us.

Are you adding Flamefall to your March must-read list? Let us know in the comments.