A Language of Dragons by S.F. Williamson – Review

Published: January 7, 2025

Publisher: HarperCollins

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy, Historical

Pages: 432 (Kindle)

My Rating: 5 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
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?

An epic, sweeping fantasy with an incredible Dark Academia setting, a clandestine, slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance, and an unputdownable story, filled with twists and turns, betrayals and secret identities, A Language of Dragons is the unmissable debut of 2025, from an extraordinary new voice.

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I didn’t know what to expect from A Language of Dragons upon picking it up – perhaps something akin to an alternate history WWII but with dragons? What I actually got was a world locked in a dystopian state thanks to the fear of dragons and awful politicians. This world is one where citizens tread carefully lest they get imprisoned by the prime minister, where children are physically punished if they don’t do well in school because failure means their social standing is downgraded, and where the knowledge of dragons is heavily restricted because if the citizenry speak to them too much they might start getting ideas.

A Language of Dragons follows Vivian Featherswallow, a young woman who seems to have made it in life – she passed her exams, was accepted early into the dragon linguistics program at the university along with her cousin, and she gets to work toward what she feels is good and right. Until one day her parents are hauled off to prison because they are supposed rebels and in a pique of fury and determination, she only worsens things when she frees a dragon and asks it to burn the evidence of her parents’ crimes (which happens to be in the prime minister’s office). Rather than simply being imprisoned or killed, the Prime Minister makes a deal with Viv – work at Bletchley Park on a secret operation as a dragon linguistic expert and if her work is successful, Viv’s family will be freed. 

What Viv doesn’t realize is that their work is going to be used for war and destruction – translating a secret dragon language, building a more deadly airplane based on dragon physiology, and possibly learning how humans could hatch and raise dragons themselves. Even then, she continues to parrot the accepted rhetoric and tries to justify the work she’s participating in. It’s clear very early on in the book that Viv isn’t a ‘good’ person per se, and she is purely looking out for her own best interest at almost any cost. This is apparent throughout the story, though she does suffer some character growth that’s nearly as painful for the reader as I’m sure it was intended to be for her. 

This was an excellent story, with character depth, truly nasty villains of the political bent, a fascinating world, and a decent amount of dragon page time. I’ve been terribly disappointed by too many books lately promising dragons and not really delivering on them, but they are well and truly present here even with humans as the primary protagonists and antagonists. A Language of Dragons does have a romantic subplot, but it is most certainly not the main focus and when it does pop up throughout the book, it’s enjoyable and suitably slow burn for the setting. Don’t expect a thinly veiled WWI or WWII narrative here – S.F. Williamson has built something entirely brilliant and new with some familiar settings. I would definitely recommend this for fans of R.F. Kuang’s Babel and possibly for fans of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series.