Fireborne

The Aurelian Cycle, Book 1

By: Rosaria Munda

Narrated by: Christian Coulson, Candice Moll, Steve West

"One of fantasy’s best series."—Booklist, starred review

Game of Thrones meets Fourth Wing in a debut young adult fantasy that's full of rivalry, romance . . . and dragons.

Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone—even the lowborn—a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders.

Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn't be more different. Annie's lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee's aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the same orphanage forged their friendship, and seven years of training have made them rivals for the top position in the dragonriding fleet.

But everything changes when survivors from the old regime surface, bent on reclaiming the city.

With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he's come to believe in. And Annie must decide whether to protect the boy she loves . . . or step up to be the champion her city needs.

From debut author Rosaria Munda comes a gripping adventure that calls into question which matters most: the family you were born into, or the one you've chosen.

©2019 Rosaria Munda (P)2019 Listening Library

Critic reviews

★ ★ ★ ★ Four Starred Reviews!

A 2019 Cybils Award Winner

An Illinois Reads 2020 Selection

A 2020-2021 Maine Student Book Award Selection

An AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award Winner

★ "This series opener thrills with dragon action, from aerial tournaments to wartime battles . . . a near-perfect work of high fantasy with wide appeal."—Booklist, starred review

★ "From the beginning, this book pulls readers in . . . full of drama, emotional turmoil, and high stakes."—Kirkus, starred review

★ "Thought-provoking and full of social and political intrigue.”—School Library Journal, starred review

Look up what Dystopian means

I have some mixed feelings. I usually like books that are an escape from life. They're usually a little more light hearted. This book is pretty heavy/political and the characters are put though some pretty rough stuff without many great outlooks on life. Me being unaware, it was a hard listen on my long road trip. They live in between a rock and a hard place the entire book. It's also a very slow build up. However, the writer is showing you the characters strengths, weaknesses, and who they are, which I really liked. You get a really good feel for the main characters and their rational. I feel like there might be something missing, but I can't for the life of me put my finger in it. Honestly, it might be some sort of happiness or contentment at all for the characters. For now, I think I'll choose something more uplifting, but I could see myself comming back to this when I want a more serious read. I know it's fantasy, but it's a more heartbreaking realistic version of fantasy, if that makes sense? The narration is decent!

Fantastic book

Fireborne was fantastic! The clever writing and story telling giving hints of a world that is not was it appears to be. The readers are great and normally I don’t like books with multiple readers. Looking forward to the next to.

Great book! Ready for more!

While it felt slow going at first, it really picked up over halfway through and I had finally fallen in love with the characters and was invested in the storyline. Ready for book 2!

Slow to start

Needs more world building. Took a while to get into. Not interested enough to continue the series

Loved it

Great book! I consumed it and struggled to put it down. Perfect blend of political, fantasy, and drama. Looking forward to starting book 2 asap.

Loved it all

I found these books after reading the Fourth Wing/ Iron Flame books. Wasn’t expecting to like them as much as those, but I fell in love. Didn’t want the series to end. Also, it’s normally taken me awhile to get into the voices for the other audiobooks I’ve listened to, but I immediately enjoyed Lee & Annie’s voice actors. I could listen to “Annie’s” voice all day. Highly recommend this whole series. I got lost in this world and it’ll be hard to find another one I love as much as this.

A fun read with dragons!

This one was gooood! I loved the dragons, the class system / politics, and the dynamic relationships between the characters. This is probably the first book I have read where there were truly two full POVs and neither were more important than the other to the storyline - was an adjustment for me, but I was pleasantly surprised! This one is definitely fantasy with a romantic subplot. Overall, a fun read that will leave you interested for more.

For my audiobook friends: each POV has a different narrator, both were very good but was a little lost on occasion when voicing some of the other characters

Story: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.5
Narration: 🎧 🎧 🎧 .5
Spice: 0

Left me Excited for More!

This was such a great read! I had heard many good things about the book series but I was a little reluctant to start it, just because I hadn't really heard much about what it was about, just that it was good.

I'd say this was a YA book, because of the age of the characters, but the themes it explored were quite mature. This book is about the rise up of a lower class regime over a cruel ruling class regime and how some of the citizens are adjusting to the new paradigm shift...all on a dragon's back. ;)

It's a fun adventure filled with great characters. There are some tropes that some might find annoying but I think they are done well here. There's a wee bit of miscommunication trope, but not in that annoying way where the characters just seem not to talk to each other because the writer isn't ready for them too. There's a little bit of a love triangle thing going on here but not in the very obvious, upsetting way where the author is setting up one pairing over the other and it's totally obvious what choice the characters should be making. It's very subtle because the romance aspect is not the main focus at all. Overall, I really enjoyed it.

Edit: I have recently reread the book after about a year in preparation for reading the next two. I was surprised to find that I hadn't noticed a few flaws the first time around, but they were glaring this time. Firstly, the author does a lot of telling rather than showing. There is very little to no dialogue between the characters in places. There are a lot of places where the characters say: So I told him about this... instead of inserting dialogue between the characters. This made everyone feel very removed from each other. Secondly, the drama intended for certain scenes would have been appropriately heightened if the characters would have spoken to each other, so not only did they seem distant but it felt like some opportunities for the reader to feel the drama of a scene was removed. It was much harder to get into the book this time and much harder to remember why I liked it so much before. But this story is far more plot-driven than character-driven, which is not normally my style. It was still an interesting world and plot, but I wish the characters were more active and spoke more.

So good!

This book had me hooked right from the beginning! The story telling and writing are great.
I really enjoyed the audiobook, the narrators did a great job.

Great performance, good story

the Narrators performances were great. the story was pretty good. would've liked more behind the scenes political positioning and scheming. At times it seemed like they were skimming over all the juicy details and jumping to the next event. really enjoyed the story.