Death From Above

It's a magical school with a constant danger of death! There are dragons! Imagine if Naomi Novik's two series (Temeraire and Scholomance) were mushed together and you would have..... not quite this.

It's its own thing, and aside from the existance of dragons the magic is fairly background, most of the time. The murderous school^Wmilitary training college is the focus.

It's mostly the story of the protagonist making her way through that. It's also slightly a romance, and it's also a bit about somebody with a chronic illness / disability managing the above against expectations, sometimes due to assistive technology.

I found it gripping and fun to read, and also... not actually good? The writing isn't bad, but isn't great either. The characters didn't feel well developed except for two or three central ones. It didn't seem to have huge depth (or I missed it). The premise of the school and how it works doesn't seem to completely hold together. But, how much does that matter when i enjoyed reading it.

One neat trick that I really liked: dragons can read the thoughts of their riders, and the author showed this by having the dragons interrupt the first-person narrative to comment on it. It blurs the distinction between what is dialogue in the world, and what is narrative in the book, which ought to jar, but it works really nicely.

I don't feel that I need to seek out the rest of the series... but I probably will the next time I'm looking for a light but gripping story.