A Language of Dragons by S.F. Williamson
Publication Date: January 2, 2025
Summary from Goodreads:
EVERY ACT OF TRANSLATION REQUIRES SACRIFICE
Welcome to Bletchley Park… with dragons.
London, 1923. Dragons soar through the skies and protests erupt on the streets, but Vivian Featherswallow isn’t worried. She’s going to follow the rules, get an internship studying dragon languages, and make sure her little sister never has to risk growing up Third Class. By midnight, Viv has started a civil war.
With her parents arrested and her sister missing, all the safety Viv has worked for is collapsing around her. So when a lifeline is offered in the form of a mysterious ‘job’, she grabs it. Arriving at Bletchley Park, Viv discovers that she has been recruited as a codebreaker helping the war effort – if she succeeds, she and her family can all go home again. If she doesn’t, they’ll all die.
At first Viv believes that her challenge, of discovering the secrets of a hidden dragon language, is doable. But the more she learns, the more she realises that the bubble she’s grown up in isn’t as safe as she thought, and eventually Viv must What war is she really fighting?
Confession:
I have some mixed feelings about this one. I liked the overall story, loved the dragons, was kind of meh about the romance, and unfortunately really didn’t like or engage with the main character, Viv.
I really liked how the dragons had a ‘secret’ language that the government wanted to crack in order to control them. This related so well to the historical context of the story and to code breaking and language in general. The setting of Bletchley Park and the use of a machine to crack the code was well done. The politics of this story also had a lot of parallels to what went on in the years before WWII. Unfortunately we are only told the story through Viv’s eyes and not liking her, made the rest of the story hard to appreciate.
Viv is a very unlikable person. She makes decisions that are extremely selfish and always seem to put her family and herself first. Even when she knows what she is doing is the wrong choice she can’t seem to help herself. She also constantly harped on the fact that she is bad and no one would like her if they knew all of the bad things she did. Honestly, I didn’t think she was all that bad, just misguided and was easily persuaded by others to choose wrongly. She does manage to show some growth by the end, but not quite enough. I did think that her love of her little sister was genuine and I couldn’t fault her for wanting to save her.
I liked the other characters in the story way more than Viv and wished we could see some of the story from their points of view. The love interest, Atlas, was a very interesting character that I wanted to know better. Unfortunately the romance didn’t quite work for me and most of that was because of the wishy washy feelings that Viv had for him. Also, not sure how I felt about his role as the good person who tries to convince her that she is good. He did preach at her a bit too much.
There are only a few instances where Viv interacted with dragons, but I loved all of those scenes. The dragons were awesome, and kind of scary. I really got the feeling that all of them would eat a human if they annoyed them too much, even though they are forbidden to do so. I hope we get to see a lot more of these dragons in the next book.
The writing style overall was pretty good, although the dialog could do with a little more witty banter between the characters. I did like the world building and thought the author did a good job there, especially with the class distinctions. This helped to understand Viv a bit more, especially with her sense of privilege and thinking that life in the third class wasn’t as horrible as the reality. There could have been a bit more about the history of interactions between the dragons and humans, but there was enough to understand the tense moments in the story.
Overall this wasn’t a bad debut. I just wanted to like Viv a bit more, and feel more about the romance. I really enjoyed many aspects of the book and I look forward to hopefully seeing at least a sequel sometime in the future. If you like historical fantasy, especially ones with dragons, then this is a book you should consider.
Confessions of a Serial Reader 
I know a lot of people haven’t liked Viv but I actually didn’t mind her. I felt that a lot of her bad decisions were down to how young she was . I definitely want to read any sequel that might come out.
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