*Spoiler free*

Business is booming for Prudence Wu. A black-market-media smuggler and scholarship student at the prestigious New Columbia Preparatory Academy, Pru is lucky to live in the Barricade Coalition where she is free to study, read, watch, and listen to whatever she wants. But between essays and exams, she chooses to spend her breaks sweet-talking border patrol with her best friend, Anabel, in order to sell banned media to the less fortunate citizens of the United Continental Confederacy, Inc. When a drop-off goes awry, Pru narrowly escapes UCC enforcers to find that her rescuer is, of all things, a sentient cybernetic dragon. On the one hand, Pru is lucky not to be in prison, or worse. On the other, the dragon seems to have imprinted on her permanently, which means she has no choice but to be its pilot. Drawn into a revolution she has no real interest in leading, Pru, Anabel, and friends Alex and Cat become key players in a brewing conflict with the UCC as the corporate government develops advanced weaponry more terrifying and grotesque than Pru could have ever imagined.

I was on board at mechanical dragon. I mean, it’s a MECHANICAL DRAGON. And if I’m being completely honest, that’s all I really knew about the book before going into it. I knew it had a dystopian backdrop and there was some government fighting going on, but mechanical dragon was at the forefront, of course. Another thing that was driving my need to read this book was Vicky’s love and flailing’s about it! I know she has good taste, so she made me even more eager to read it. Trigger warnings: death of a parent, grief