Fire

This was part very good and part very bad. The lack of plot made it a surprisingly slow read and the fluid writing style made it hard to put down. You can see I'm a little torn here. To read exactly how torn and why, here's my full review: http://sffbookreview.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/kristin-cashore-fire/

Update: 08/07/2015

If you'd like to read this review on my blog.

Rating: 1.5/5 stars.

Fire is the awaited sequel, or rather, companion novel, that follows a different heroin from the same land. Set a few years back before Graceling, we meet Fire, the last Human Monster, and how she tries to live being a part of a falling kingdom, caused by her father, Cansrel, who was an even more powerful and crueler Human Monster.

Yeah, I did not like this, really.

I admit it, nothing was missing. There was a plot, there was a drive, there were the two lovers with a slight love triangle so common, and a heroin with hidden powers she's afraid to use. But already that is super cliche, it's the same formula for every standard Young Adult Fantasy book.

But even that sounded great with the setting this book provided. But it wasn't enough. Not nearly.

Once I finished reading, I realized it reminded me of Graceling. This book had the same weird under the radar plot and the two fighter/lovers, and all those special powers. But in Graceling, it worked. It did not in this book.

Really, the first half was completely boring and tedious, and the second half was better but too random. And once again, like Graceling, I felt the author was trying to achive something bigger than what she could handle, and ended up coming short. And it's really disappointing, because if you see what happened through the whole book, it should have worked, but it didn't.

And I didn't buy the MC character at all. She was too weak and suddenly so strong and so whinny and at the same time silent. She was a contradiction of things. One minute she was crying for this and the next she said it was better like that, and then back to hating. It was a disaster.

And it had that Twilight thing, that every action had a face to join it, and of course, it was over analyzed.

There was also that thing about king Leck and his past. That small story was actually nice, but his place in the plot-line was confusing and totally unnecessary. It felt like, he could have died and we could have avoided so much, but Fire is stupid and unreal so she didn't kill him. And I also needed some explanation about this kingdom thing, like, why are there two worlds and they don't know nothing of each other, and how does that even work? But once again, it was too big for the author and she couldn't handle it.

So yeah, I'm really disappointed with this book, specially because there's thing I kind of liked in Graceling that I now want to cringe my eyes at.

I don't recommend you to read this book, unless you're like really obsessed with it and need more of it. But I'll call it a waste of time.