Divine Traitors

 So Let Them Burn and This Ends in Embers by Kamilah Cole, 816 pages.

Faron Vincent was 12 when she was granted the power of the gods to become the Childe Empyrean and fight the war to liberate her country. Five years later San Irie is free and Faron has spent the last few years frivolously using her powers and feeling purposeless. She is given sudden purpose again when her sister Elara ends up bonded to an enemy dragon, and Faron has to desperately try to find a way to sever the bond so she doesn't have to kill her sister. This desperation drives her to start something she can't stop, and the whole world may have to pay the price.

This Jamaican-inspired anti-colonial fantasy novel started pretty interesting. I liked the tension between Elara's plot at the dragon academy and Faron's attempts to uncover ancient secrets. Unfortunately, the second book was much harder to buy into, partially because many of the characters' actions were so unfathomably selfish. I also found the magic a little simplistic, especially given then real world countries with the thinnest possible coat of fantasy paint. If you're looking for a young adult novel where a young woman from a (formerly) colonized people has to go to a dragon academy run by her colonizers, set in a world with clearly identifiable real world countries, I would recommend To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose instead.