A Promise of Fire » Book Review

In every book review, I like to mix a little praise with a little criticism. I find that it keeps things intelligent and fair. But finding balance was a struggle with A Promise of Fire. Here's what I came up with...

This book was consistent... consistently bad.

This book broke rules... rules that should have been kept.

This book made me want things... things like my lighter.

That's the best I can do.

The sad thing is, I was really looking forward to A Promise of Fire. It's been getting raves from many reviewers! But did we read the same book?!

The Romance!

From the very first page, I had serious concerns about the quality of the writing. Seriously, from page one! Alarm bells were going off in my head like a chorus of rusty vuvuzelas. Turn back! Turn back! 

For one thing, the romantic cliches were thick on the ground right out of the gate. Our romantic hero catches our heroine's eye a few paragraphs into the book.  She's entranced by his roiling, rippling, and rolling muscles...

Spare me. The cheesiness didn't abate throughout the rest of the book either.  In fact, it just got even more distilled until I couldn't go a single page without screwing up my face. I've going to have to Oil of Olay the crap out of my forehead now. Thanks, A Promise of Fire. 

I didn't find the romance cute.  I didn't find it funny.  However, I didn't find it offensive, like one Goodreads reviewer did (although I understand why she thought so). What I thought about it was, Wow. This is really, really dumb. 

The warlord Griffin, or "Beta Sinta" kidnaps our heroine at the beginning of the book.  Now, this is a classic trope in romance novels, the abducted virgin, and I really don't have a problem with it.  It leads for some juicy situations that I'm not above enjoying. But Bouchet took the cliches too far, all the way to stupid town. Around the fifth iteration of our heroine squealing "I hate you!" simultaneous to her nipples hardening, I'd had enough.

There were so many laughable "romantic" moments in A Promise of Fire. I wish I could share them all with you so we could all snicker together and then go excuse ourselves to barf. But that would mean spoilers. And I don't want to ruin a very special scene for you guys. You deserve the magic of experiencing that moment fresh. You're welcome.

The Magic!

A Promise of Fire takes place in a fantasy world, but Bouchet inexplicably chose to transplant the ancient Greek religious system into her book.



Did you all know that I'm a die-hard fan of Greek mythology? So much so that I needed to do some intense deep breathing to get through Percy Jackson. It's even ironic that I put in this GIF from Hercules because I can't stand that movie. IT'S SO HERETICAL.

So, I was not amused or otherwise enchanted by Bouchet's inclusion of the Greek pantheon into her fantasy book.  It was weird, inaccurate, and came across as really lazy, to be frank. Why couldn't the author do her own world-building? Make up her own gods? It's not that hard. For instance, did you know that Hagon is the Luluan god of virgins, full moons, and bratwurst? Oh, you didn't? THAT'S BECAUSE I JUST MADE HIM UP! See? Not difficult.

The Craft!

This is perhaps the hardest part of the review to write, because I truly, truly loathed Bouchet's writing. I thought it should have stayed on Wattpad, or whatever Tartarus it was spawned within.

It was just horrible. The pacing, the dialogue, the transitions, the description, the characterization... literally every facet that makes up fiction writing... it was mediocre at best and dry-gagging bad at its worst.

I was thinking about pulling some quotes to give examples... but I wouldn't know where to begin or where to stop.

Everything sucked.

But perhaps the thing I hated most about A Promise of Fire was... the pacing. I know! It's a weird thing to hate. Usually when you think of pacing, you think of plot events happening either too fast, too slow, or just right. But Bouchet fucked up the pacing on an almost molecular level. Everything was too rapid, down to the level of a sentence!

And nowhere did the pacing seem more slapdash than in the dialogue sections. With each bit of speech, the characters would react in a dramatic way — chuckling, chortling, moaning, mewling, blanching, blushing, growling, grinning, and, of course, nipple hardening. It made the characters seem totally unstable — not just mercurial, but possessed by demons. No one should go from happy to sad to "mewling" within the space of a page! It's not right!

The End!

With the end of this review, I'm officially done with A Promise of Fire. I'll never have to think about this book again, although something tells me it will be haunting my dreams. I haven't hated a book with this fervor in a really long time.