A Promise of Fire

MY EYES TRIP OVER A MAN AND GET STUCK.

This was the first sentence in my copy of the book. Just like that, in all caps. Never before have I wanted to DNF a book after the very first sentence. It turns out, it wasn't the first sentence; it and a few of the paragraphs that followed it were lifted from the chapter and used as a foreword of sorts. I thought it was a bit odd, but whatever. The point is, omg that sentence. I rolled my eyes so hard I gave myself a headache.

But it was a buddy read and a book club selection and I'd just joined the book club and I wanted to participate and Felicia Day and ... well, you know how it is. So I took some Excedrin and kept reading. I figured there'd be more eye rolling soon enough, and I may as well get it all out of the way before the meds kicked in.

There was a lot of eye rolling.

Eventually, as usually happens with a good story, I got interested enough to put aside the snark. Mostly. There was a lot of oooh, he touched me, so hot, I burn, scorching, etc. which was irritating. There was a lot of mild rape fantasy stuff, wherein woman—despite her strength and self-reliance—falls for big, bad, burly, manly man who, let's not forget, kidnaps her, and that was frankly hugely problematic for me.

But it is in fact a good story; or, at least, it is a story with many goodish and enjoyable elements. There's the fun take on Greek mythology and godsly shenanigans, there's all sorts of fun magic that I've not seen before, there's a fantastic chapter in which our protagonist is completely high and it's spectacularly hilarious, and there's a really stellar supporting cast. And a circus! I wish we'd gotten to see more of that.

A lot of the writing feels really young, and that's probably what irked me in the beginning, because I'm a grumpy old. But in time, I came around to thinking that it works here, for these characters and this story, and I guess maybe they don't have to get off my lawn. For now.