Picked this up at Books-a-Million for $5 in the clearance bin, started reading it to my girls as a bedtime story. Two chapters in, it successfully put the 4-year-old asleep and kept the 6-year-old's attention. 
 Having finished it, the story kept their interest and every night they wanted me to read it to them, but I think a lot of it went over their heads and, for that matter, it had some pretty dark material for kids my daughters' ages. There's a fair bit of death here, from the "off-screen" death of Adara's mother to [spoiler]the death of her uncle very much "on screen" and the death of 3 enemy dragons and their dragon riders. [/spoiler]. There's also some complicated emotional baggage here. 
 All that said, it had enough magic to excite the kids and Martin tells a compelling little yarn. The illustrations were beautiful.