Not every reader who finishes Fourth Wing wants more romance. Some of us want more dragons.
Rebecca Yarros put dragon riders back at the top of the bestseller lists with Fourth Wing. She also turned the subgenre into romantasy for a lot of readers. Search for dragon rider books now, and most of the recommendations come with a love interest front and centre.
That is fine if it is what you want.
But plenty of readers come to dragon rider fantasy for something else. The bond between rider and beast. The terror of the first flight. Aerial battles, military discipline, politics, and the question of what a person becomes when they are tied to a creature that could kill them.
That is the kind of dragon rider story I love to read, and it is the kind I write.
So here are six dragon rider books where the romance stays in the margins or never turns up at all. In each one, the relationship that matters most is the one between rider and dragon.
If you want an even wider selection, I have also rounded up ten dragon rider series with rich world-building.
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
Will Laurence is a captain in the Royal Navy. During the Napoleonic Wars, he captures a French frigate and finds a dragon egg in the hold.
The egg hatches before they reach port. The dragon chooses Laurence.
That choice ends his naval career. He is sent to the Aerial Corps, a branch of the military that polite society looks down on, and he has to learn a new kind of duty beside Temeraire, a dragon who reads, argues and asks awkward questions about the way Britain treats its dragons.
The heart of the book is the friendship between the two of them. It is warm, funny and fiercely loyal, and it carries the whole series.
The aerial battles are superb too. Novik treats dragons as warships, with crews, harnesses, bombers and riflemen on their backs.
Read this if you want a dragon bond built on friendship and respect, with the feel of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin novels.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
For a lot of readers, this is where dragon riders begin.
Eragon is a farm boy who finds a polished blue stone in the mountains. The stone hatches. The dragon inside is Saphira, and the moment Eragon touches her, his life belongs to a war he knows nothing about.
The Riders who once kept the peace are gone, destroyed by one of their own. Galbatorix rules as king. A new Rider outside his control is the last thing the Empire will tolerate.
Eragon does take a shine to Arya, an elf, but she wants nothing to do with him, and the book spends its time elsewhere: on Saphira, on Brom’s training, and on the road.
Saphira is the reason to read it. She is proud, sharp and protective, and she talks back.
Paolini wrote it as a teenager, and that shows in places. It is also the opening of the Inheritance Cycle and a modern classic for a reason. Read it if you want the classic chosen-rider adventure told with real heart.
Fire & Blood by George R. R. Martin
If House of the Dragon is how you got here, go to the source.
Fire & Blood is written as a history of House Targaryen, from Aegon’s conquest of Westeros to the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Dragons decide wars. Riders decide the succession. When the family turns on itself, dragon fights dragon in the skies over Westeros.
There are plenty of marriages in this book. Almost none of them are about love. They are alliances, bargains and power plays, and many of them end in blood.
It reads like a chronicle rather than a novel, which will not suit everyone. But for readers who want dragon riders as the engine of politics and war, few books come close.
Read it if you want dragons as weapons of state, and a hard look at what happens when one family holds that much power.
Want to try my wyvern riders first?
Three Sisters, the prequel collection to The Ravenglass Throne, is free in my Starter Library, along with four more books, sent straight to your Kindle.
Fireborne by Rosaria Munda
Annie and Lee grew up on opposite sides of a revolution.
Lee was born into the dragonriding aristocracy that ruled the city of Callipolis. Annie was born to the peasants they ruled. The revolution swept the old order away and took both their families with it.
Now any child can test to become a dragonrider, whatever their birth. Annie and Lee have both made it into the new dragon corps, and both are competing for the title of Firstrider.
Then the surviving dragonlords come back to take the city.
Munda draws on Plato’s Republic, and the politics are the point: propaganda, class, loyalty, and what a revolution owes the people it claims to have freed.
There is some romantic tension between Annie and Lee, but it never takes the reins. Read this if you want dragon riders with the edge of a political thriller.
Ascendant by Michael R. Miller
Holt Cook is not a dragon rider.
He is a servant in a dragon order, the lad who carries other people’s kit and dreams of a bond he will never have.
Then he finds a dragon nobody else wanted.
What follows is an underdog story set against the Scourge, a dark plague spreading through the kingdom. Holt has to prove himself to a dragon order that never meant to let him in, while the threat outside the walls grows.
This sits at the gentler end of progression fantasy. You watch Holt and his dragon grow stronger step by step, and the bond between them is the relationship that matters.
Read it if you enjoy progression fantasy such as Will Wight’s Cradle and want a dragon at the centre of it.
The Ravenglass Throne by Jon Cronshaw
This one is mine, and my riders fly wyverns rather than dragons.
When assassins kill the King of Ostreich, his three daughters inherit a kingdom rotting from within.
Irmin is a commander who fights from wyvern-back. Adelinde is a scholar who studies the ravenglass network that binds rider to mount. Elana is a diplomat trying to hold the court together as treachery spreads through the noble houses.
They have not trusted each other in years. To stop the conspiracy, they will have to.
The relationships at the centre of the story are between three sisters, and between each rider and her wyvern. If you want to know more about the creatures themselves, I have written about why I chose wyverns over dragons and how wyvern lore works in the series.
The series is complete in twelve parts, it is in Kindle Unlimited, and the audiobook is on Audible.
Read it if you want dragon rider politics, a fractured royal family and nobledark fantasy where hope bleeds but never dies.
What These Dragon Rider Books Understand
The bond is the love story.
All six of these books get that right. The partnership between rider and dragon carries the weight a romance would carry elsewhere: trust, fear, loyalty, and the dread of losing the other half of yourself.
When that bond is written well, it does not need a love triangle beside it. I explored this in more depth in why we love rider fantasy.
Where to Start With Dragon Rider Books Without the Romance
For friendship and Napoleonic battles in the sky, start with His Majesty’s Dragon.
For the classic chosen-rider adventure, read Eragon.
For dragons as weapons of dynastic war, pick up Fire & Blood.
For revolution and class politics, try Fireborne.
For progression fantasy with a dragon at its heart, read Ascendant.
And for three sisters, a murdered king and a kingdom held together by wyvern riders, begin The Ravenglass Throne with Shattered Kingdom.
Start With Three Sisters for Free
Before the king falls, before the conspiracy, there were three sisters.
Three Sisters collects three prequels to The Ravenglass Throne, one for each of Irmin, Adelinde and Elana. It is part of my free Starter Library: five books, five doors into the Ravenglass Universe, sent straight to your Kindle.
Claim your free Starter Library here.
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