The second book, Shadow Scale, takes us out of Goredd and into the wider world as Seraphina sets out on a journey to try and find her fellow half-dragons. Several other individuals, about whom she has long had strange visions, are all half-dragons as well.

Seraphina and her dragon uncle work to prevent this, even as she struggles to hide her half-dragon nature, for which she would be widely reviled if it were to become known the Saints that the Goreddi worship are largely anti-dragon, and in their writings refer to any offspring of humans and dragons as “abominations.” Eventually, an attempt on the Queen’s life is made, Seraphina’s secret comes out to some of those that she is closest to…and she learns that she is certainly not the only half-dragon in the world. Goredd, which had developed ways to fight the dragons in the centuries of war preceding the treaty, has allowed its skills in dragon fighting to lapse, and is in grave danger if the hostile dragons were to win control. The conflict of the first book centers around a growing conflict amongst the dragons, some of whom wish to uphold their current treaty with Goredd, while others (the “traditionalists”) would rather go back to preying on humans at will as dragons did in the past. Seraphina herself is a musician in Goredd’s court…and secretly a half-dragon. The first book is set entirely in the country of Goredd, where forty years of uneasy peace between the humans and the dragons is teetering. They are set in a fantasy world in which two sentient species – humans and dragons – are struggling to coexist. I loved both Seraphina and Shadow Scale! Seraphina was one of my “grabbed it randomly off the library shelf because it looked interesting” finds that worked out well – I was hooked about ten pages in.

So, this is technically a review of Shadow Scale, but out of necessity it will also talk about the preceding book Seraphina.

(“A book published this year” from the Reading Challenge)

Shadow scale rachel hartman