I recently finished Eon, by Alison Goodman! 
 Eon is the first book of what I believe to be a duology about Eona, a 16 year old girl who is disguising herself as a 12 year old boy, in hopes of becoming a Dragoneye - someone who can control dragons and use dragon magic. She enters the Dragoneye world in a way she never would have expected... 
 This book is basically a 're-telling of Mulan, but with magic and dragons! Such a cool premise! I mean, who hasn't been liking all these re-telling lately? And magic and dragons are always cool in my book! 
 The story is super creative! It blends all kinds of ancient Asian cultural ideas, such as the palace rules, the chakra idea, dragons, magic, duty, gods, etc... in a coherent story that unfolds very interestingly. 
 Eon(a) is a really great character. Her will and determination to achieve her goals is incredible. She has a lot of backstory that really helps explain why being a Dragoneye is so important for her. 
 Her Master has an amazing will of going to all ends to protect an help Eona, no matter how hard some of his actions are. He was a real teacher as well as a master. 
 All of the side characters are also really great, each bringing a unique price to the story. (I sorta kinda ship Eona and Prince Kygo together, tbh!) 
 I really enjoyed the parts when Eon(a) would be searching for the truth about her dragon, and learning about being a Dragoneye - these really brought a dimension to this mythology that made it seem almost real! 
 However, there were a few aspects of the book that I did not appreciate as much... 
 The main thing was that I thought that some parts were really slow. Let me just tell you that politics, both in novels and in real life, usually make my interest level drop quite a bit... 
 Eon had a lot of chapters that were basically devoted to such politics, both between the Dragoneyes themselves and the people in the Palace. My attention span really declined in such parts, and I ended up skimming them pretty often, to get to the more Dragoneye-esque parts... 
 Also, I was pretty disappointed with the ending... Lord Ido massacred hundreds of people, creating disaster everywhere, tries to hurt/kill Eona and her friends, and to stop him, Eona just fixed his compassion hua center, and he suddenly became nice? And she just lets him go?! Um... no. Haha nope. Too simple for such a complicated story! Or did I miss something? 
 Anyway, overall, I thought it was pretty enjoyable! I might have to re-read it to get the whole politics part =p