Leather Bound
Ryn Stryker
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: Nov. 10, 2026
Genre: Fantasy Romance
To fly is to be free
Emelia has always dreamed of a burning desire that can become reality if she can become a Rider of the Empire.
Freshly eighteen, Emelia is finally eligible to be recruited by the four Rider houses. However, there is only one she wishes to House Phalan, the house of the Dragon Riders.
After a rocky start involving a chance encounter with the charming First Prince of the Empire, Emelia is presented with the opportunity to escape her current circumstances– a mundane life in a small, forgotten mountain town – and sets off on the grueling journey to claim what she knows deep down is her becoming a Dragon Rider.
However, achieving her dream is not a simple task. The journey is a perilous one, and she must survive the horrors within the Great Forest before she can even reach Fate’s Hold, where her training is set to begin.
Emelia quickly learns safety isn’t guaranteed within Fate’s Hold, nor is becoming a Rider. To earn the opportunity to stand before a dragon, she must suppress the forbidden magic that has awakened within her and survive deadly elimination trials.
And through it all, there’s Scar, the mysterious twenty-year-old recruit whose past seems filled with darkness… and a deep loathing for the Empire. Can her heart handle the connection growing between the two of them, or will she need to harden herself in order to get what she truly wants?
With dangers on all sides, and an ancient evil stirring, the most important question is– can Emelia survive long enough to take her fate in her own hands and become a Dragon Rider?
My thoughts…
I was excited to dive into a story about a girl joining the ranks of magic wielders and mythical beast riders. In the world the author has created, there are several different branches of the military. You can become a dragon rider, manticore rider, griffon rider, or amphiptere rider. Em has her sights set on becoming a dragon rider, even though the road to getting there is incredibly dangerous. If I’m being honest, I would have loved to see her chosen by a manticore or griffon instead, simply because you don’t see those creatures featured as often.
About half of the book focuses on the recruits marching from their homelands to the location where the trials will take place. During this journey, we get to watch the characters forge bonds, learn what it means to become a dragon rider, and discover just how dangerous being a magic wielder can be. I actually enjoyed this part of the story because it helped build the world the author was creating. We learned things alongside the recruits, receiving information in much the same way they did.
However, once the recruits finally reach the training grounds and the actual elimination trials begin, the pacing takes a bit of a nosedive in the opposite direction. Suddenly, everything moves incredibly quickly, and we’re not given much time to experience what is happening. There are chapters that start with “one month later,” which means we’re skipping over massive chunks of time that I would have considered important for character development. These are the moments when I wanted to see the recruits working together, overcoming challenges, and actually forming the bonds that would carry them through the trials. Instead, we’re mostly told that these things happened rather than getting to experience them.
These time jumps also leave us with a romance that feels like it comes out of nowhere. We’re suddenly told that Em and Scar, one of the male recruits, have become intimate and are apparently an item. During their initial journey, Scar makes several attempts at flirting with Em, although I’d probably describe most of his comments as crude and immature rather than charming. He also has this habit of giving her smoldering looks one minute and turning dark and aggressive the next. We’re told he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to the empire, but his behavior just felt all over the place. Honestly, I would have much preferred if he hadn’t been a romantic interest at all. Their attraction felt forced, and I never really bought into the relationship.
One thing I really enjoyed was the author’s decision to incorporate multiple mythical creatures into the military. Having dragon, manticore, griffon, and amphiptere riders, alongside the magic-wielding aspect of the story, creates a world with a lot of potential. There are some genuinely interesting ideas here, and I wanted to love what the author was building.
Unfortunately, between the unexpected romance, the time jumps, and the lack of meaningful character development, I struggled to connect with the characters. I wanted to see these recruits become more than just names on a page. Instead, I felt like I was being told about their relationships rather than getting to experience them firsthand. And when characters started dying, I didn’t feel much of anything. I wasn’t invested enough in them for their losses to have an impact.
Ultimately, I think there’s a lot of potential in this world and its premise, but I needed more time with the characters to really care about what happened to them.
