Friday, July 15, 2016

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.

14 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear you didn't like this! I haven't heard of A Promose With Fire until now, but I'm going to stray away from pickin it up. At least you tried to have a balance of pros and cons! XD

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lol... I might be cracking up over how much you hated this book :P I requested this one after seeing some rave reviews and I gotta say, I agree with you. I'm not seeing anything special or out-of-this-world about it. In fact, I stopped reading around the 80% mark. It was just not very interesting anymore? I'm sure I'll go back and finish it since I don't like to DNF but I totally get what you mean with the cliché stuff. I've done a few eye rolls myself. I think I only really liked the beginning and the side characters that were kind of fun.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had to LOL at your review! :P So sorry this was not the read for you though. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm impressed that you made it through 80% before giving up. I don't know why I made it through the entire book. Perhaps because Sierra and I received this through NetGalley and I felt obligated. But I would like to know your opinion on the ending... I've never read one quite like it!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for laughing. Amusing people is literally the ONLY benefit of having read and reviewed this travesty.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ellen read me some stellar quotes. I looked at the first line and rolled my eyes, haha. I do feel the need to read this one too though because of Netgalley. At least I won't have to give it a proper review since I'm sure Ellen has said enough for both of us :P.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's true. I did try!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This is the first time I've heard of this one - and based on your review I won't be reading it either.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Gosh.. well this book just seems like total hot mess so I'm super sorry that you had to go through it! But at least you're a total champ since you made it through such a horrible ordeal. teehee! I could feel your hate for this book and I'll be honest, the whole "muscular, rippled" guys kinda grates on my nerves too, so you're not the lone ranger there! :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Cute and funny review. I really struggle with the balance I give with reviews. I want students to read books, any books, so if I give a book a bad review I figure no one will read the book. But if I don't give the book a bad review, and it deserves it, then my credibility is in question. Most often I will just skip reviewing books I hate.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I know what you mean. I worry sometimes about publishing bad reviews on the blog when I get them from Netgalley. But I realize that bad reviews don't always stop me from reading a book. Sometimes I just like to be part of the know... how bad is it?! And let's laugh about it together :P.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm reading it right now!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I know I should be focusing on the book BUT... you don't like the plays on Greek Mythology in PJ or the movie Hercules?! I love both! I love how they take something and add new layers and opinions and biases to them DD: But I am sorry that you couldn't like this book though. Seems like some not too great books have been coming through lately.

    ReplyDelete