Eon and Eona by Alison Goodman

Eon and Eona follow the story of (you guessed it!) Eon. Or Eona if you want to be technical. Eona is a girl who has been raised as a boy (Eon) since the age of six. In this Chinese/Japanese-esque world there are twelve energy dragons, following the twelve animals of the zodiac (I believe the so-called mirror dragon goes together with the dragon zodiac: it is sometimes referred to as the dragon dragon). There are eleven dragoneyes (people who possess the ability to use one of the dragon's power and in return, give that dragon some of their life force) at the moment, all but one for the mirror dragon who has been gone for over 500 years. Eona has the ability to see all eleven of the dragons (the mirror dragon not being present to be seen anyways). The only problem is that to be considered a possible candidate for a dragoneye apprentice (and the a dragoneye after 12 years have passed), you must be male. Thus the disguise. The story begins a little while before the Rat-dragoneye-apprentice-picking ceremony.

I feel sure that there was a shorter, much less complicated way to explain the plot but that will have to suffice because I'm not changing it. Anyway, these books are totally worth a read. What most stuck out to me was the impressive range and development of characters. Every even somewhat important character was developed beautifully. Each character had depth and was totally believable. My only criticism of them is that sometimes I didn't feel like they reacted as much as or how they should have. I think that mostly just came up in the second book though, the first book is pretty solid. The first book was definitely better than the second. Not because the second was just made to get more money (it was totally necessary to the story), but because the relationships started to seem unrealistic and it began to recede slightly into the realm of cliche. Several of the characters changed so much that they grew apart, and at the end of the book they seemed to suddenly jump back to their first-book relationships. The character change was perfectly fine, but it should have been followed through or at least a reason should have been given for the sudden change back. Despite those few problems though, the story was extremely enjoyable and engaging. It also held its own in terms of originality (at least based on what I've seen so far). Overall, these books would definitely be worth a read.