A Language of Dragons - S.F. Williamson

Title: A Language of Dragons
Author: S.F. Williamson
Genre: Fantasy, Alternative universe
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 469
Date read: May 2026

Welcome to Bletchley Park... with dragons.

London, 1923. Dragons soar through the skies and protests erupt on the streets, but Vivien 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 decide: What war is she really fighting?


A good book, that unfortunately didn't work for me. To be fair, I'd picked it up thinking it was a stand-alone novel, and could not see how S.F. Williamson was going to have time to wrap everything up neatly ... spoiler alert - they didn't!

I've always been interested in codebreaking, so the idea of using dragon language to create a new code was intriguing, and I loved the beginning of the novel, as Viv was getting settled at Bletchley Park. But unfortunately at that point the novel changed focus, and it ended up being more about the war effort than the actual codebreaking. I appreciate the dilemma of "how far will you go to support a corrupt regime in order to keep your loved ones safe", but that wasn't the reason I had picked up the book, so it ended up being a bit of a let-down.

Definitely an "it's not you - it's me" situation though. Had I been expecting a novel about fighting for the resistance, it would have been a completely different kettle of fish.