Dragonar Academy: Vol. 1 takes place on a fantasy world, and in particular three countries in that world. They are the Chevron Kingdom, the Zepharos Empire, who are at war, and sandwiched between them, the Lautramont Knight Country, ruled by the Lautramont Knight Family. The fourth princess, Silvia Lautramont is one of the main female protagonists, and the class mate of Ash Blake, the main character.
In this setting, dragons are an endangered species that hundreds of years before this story made an agreement with humans to "breed" them. The Dragons are nurtured to birth by humans and other breeders, who have an unusually strong type of life-force magic, and thus can sustain the dragon they are bonded with. Ash is one such breeder, with the exception of two unique facts about him. First of all, he is an upper-class student at the Dragonar Academy whose Parr (dragon partner) still has not been born yet. This is unusual as the dragons are always born and awakened during basic level courses, and Ash is advanced level and his dragon is still sleeping. The other unique thing about Ash Blake is that he can ride any dragon. This is unheard of, as since the ancient pact between dragons and other species, each breeder can only ride his or her parr. With Ash, such relationships and spiritual connections are unneeded for a dragon to allow him to rider him/her.
These two reasons make Ash considered a "problem student" for his wierdness, though it is a bit unfair as he seems to be a good student and a very kind person. Anyways, one of the reasons for such a reception to Ash is about to be gone, and replaced with an even stranger situation. You see, his dragon is about to be born, and it is a beautiful young girl. His parr is a humanoid dragon he names Eco, the girl with undeveloped horns on the cover of the book. From here, his adventures with his new friends Princess Silvia and student president and noted Dragonar (Dragon Knight warrior) Rebecca Randall, are about to begin.
I saw this book after I read both a fan translation of the first two light novel and have seen most of the recent anime adaptation. I really liked it because it didn't follow the trend of so many other manga adaptations of light novels, i.e., in not giving much information. In other words, many manga writers who adapt other works assume that the reader is familiar with said work, and so don't spend much time on in-depth issues. At least, I think they make that assumption, because they don't always explain all that much.
Not so with this one, which really did explain many of the core concepts of the book, even if it did compress some of the essentials of the story lines in order to adapt the tale better. But those are mostly the minor details about some of the story line.
The fan service, like with the anime, can be a tad ridiculous at times, but it is more acceptable as it is tastefully done most of the time, and all the time it is part of the story or a bit of humor. In general, the artist and writer adapting the story to manga format did a very good job and this is really one of my favorite manga adaptions of recent time.
Highly Recommended.