Meh. It was fantasy, and I'm a general lover of dragons. Not reallllly sold on the romance part of it. I appreciated that their was more build-up to it than other books I've read, but at the same time So Much was happening plot-wise that it still felt a little rushed. idk. Appreciated the diversity, though I found the capitalized honorifics unnecessarily distracting... Maybe that's just me. I am half-committed to reading the sequel.

*post read clarity changed my review to 3.25*
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, but overall it was fun, magical, and full of potential for further exploration of the world it takes place in. 

I say this as kindly as I can, but my first and immediate thought upon starting the book was that it read like an adult-fantasy version of Warrior Cats. Just replace the cats with dragons. I can't lie, this made it really hard for me to get invested because I just couldn't take it seriously. I think my issue is that one of the main POVs is from a dragon, and his speech patterns/internal monologue was pretty much identical to a human's, except it was about dragon things. I don't really know if this makes sense, but I felt like I was reading about a person who was pretending to be a dragon. If I'm reading from the POV of a non-human species, I wouldn't expect them to explain things unique to their species' culture in such a human way. The POV being in first person (along with this character's surname being "emberclaw", which is the most Warrior Cats thing I've heard in ages) probably also didn't help. This definitely won't be an issue for everyone, so any potential readers should take it with a grain of salt. I normally love stories that are whimsical and improbable and outlandish and magical, so it's not that. Dragons are my favorite mythical creature, so it wasn't that either. Regardless, this was a significant hurdle that took about 100 pages to clear. 

HOWEVER, once I was able to get into this story, I couldn't stop reading. There's so much history to the world and to both of the main characters, and the societal structure is very interesting. The MCs have great chemistry together and are fun to watch. I loved that this book was whimsical but still covered more adult themes, and the internal monologues were funny and distinct for each character. 

I have to admit, I wasn't the biggest fan of Sorin as an added POV. Don't get me wrong, I loved the concept of her character. She's someone who I would absolutely read a separate book about, but I kept getting annoyed when her chapters would pop up, especially because they weren't really necessary to understand the plot. I could see her being very important later in the series, and her POV certainly added more depth to the world/long term plot points, but for this book I didn't find her scenes very impactful or relevant to the MCs. I have this issue with most multi-pov books though, so it may just be personal preference. 

I agree with other reviews here that the book was slow for the first 2/3 and then took off at full speed for the last 1/3, but I was having fun throughout so I still enjoyed myself. I was torn between rating this 3.5, 3.75, or 4. Personally, I don't want to pick up any book if I see it has less than four stars. However, I also enjoy most books I read while simultaneously feeling that they don't deserve a full 4, so my system is completely nonsensical and emotion based. In the end, I'm rating Dragonfall 4⭐️ because I want there to be enough momentum for the author to finish the series (so much potential for growth and depth!) and also I don't want other people to avoid reading because it ended up with less than that (even though I know my one review is just a drop in the bucket). Maybe think of it as 3.75 quality with an added .25 for the fact I would recommend it to someone as a fun, light read.