Here's a historical fantasy novel set in an alternate reality 1923 in a London where sentient dragons live among humans, and the prime minister is a woman, having negotiated a peace agreement with the Dragon Queen after the dragons of Bulgaria rose up and killed all the humans there. However, written into the peace agreement is a strict class system. And staying in Second Class, with its privileges of being able to go to University, is conditional on passing exams at seventeen.

Vivian Featherswallow passed her exams and hopes to become a dragon linguist. She already knows six dragon languages. But when her parents are arrested as being part of the rebellion, and her cousin taken as well, Viv will do anything to save them - even set free an imprisoned criminal dragon to burn the prime minister's office where they've got the evidence against her parents.

Well, that doesn't work so well, and let's just say that the rebellion heats up. Viv has a chance to redeem herself if she'll work on solving a dragon code - at a place called Bletchley.

I laughed when Bletchley was mentioned, because it's the current favorite topic in children's books. Last year, off the top of my head, there was Max in the House of Spies, The Bletchley Riddle, and The Enigma Girls. This time, the top secret folks at Bletchley were trying to figure out what the dragons were saying with their high-pitched squeaks and clicks (like bats or whales) above the pitch that human ears can hear, but able to be modified by a clever machine.

Okay, up to this point I was all in. I loved the nuances of the dragon languages Viv knows (because yes! It makes sense that dragons would develop their own languages). But I had a little trouble with the whole Bletchley code-breaking apparatus applied to it. They were trying to figure out what the dragons meant with "Trill #4" or "Tone #11" - and I never did understand how the codebreakers even learned which pitch was which, let alone what they meant.

Beyond that, though, there are bullies guarding them and more and more reasons to join the rebel side, but Viv has been promised her whole family (including her baby sister, now in an orphanage) will go free if she gives the prime minister the key to the "dragon code." And it gets somewhat convoluted from there - who to trust, what's going on. Mind you, this could be a case of I didn't listen closely at a crucial point and lost the thread, but there was also a bit more Angst on the part of the main character about every decision than I care for in a novel, and her decisions did go back and forth, so it was hard to keep track of what she was trying to do. It was also a little bit hard to believe anyone would have accepted the dystopian society they were living in. And there was some awful violence portrayed. I mean, they're fighting with dragons, so what did I expect?

All that said, I loved the idea of sentient dragons who are not exactly tame dragons, living together with humans in a fragile peace. The story did not end with this book, and things are very likely about to get much worse, but it did end at a satisfying pausing point. Despite those quibbles, I'm fascinated enough by this book, I'm sure I'll want to hear more.