A Promise of Fire » Book Review

Ellen and I were both DYING to get our hands on an ARC copy of A Promise of Fire when we saw the slew of 4-5 star reviews from reputable bloggers. Unfortunately, we didn't feel the same kind of magic that they did. Ellen disliked it (to put it mildly) and she already wrote up a review (HERE) detailing her less-than-stellar opinion of the book.

Fortunately for me, I didn't despise it quite as much as she did. But I definitely agree with all the issues that Ellen brought up in her review.

Catalia

Our main character, Cat (as she likes to be called), is 23 years old. I didn't figure that out until I started writing this review! She talks like a petulant 15 year old. During her inner monologue, she frequently uses words like 'gah' and 'gag'. If I was playing a drinking game, I would be drunk in 3 chapters flat. Okay, okay. I'm a lightweight. BUT STILL.

"Thanks the Gods. Gag!
Sort of.
Except not at all.
Gah! I'm going insane!"

SHOOT ME.

The synopsis calls Cat smart-mouthed.

I wouldn't say that the words coming out of her mouth are... 'smart'. It's mostly a constant stream of 'I hate you', 'get lost' and 'let me go'. Look, I love a witty character. I LIVE for banter and sexual tension. She talks for the sake of saying words and to antagonize others. I should pull out quotes, but gaaahhhhh I don't wanna! (See what I did there?)

One of my bookish pet peeves is when a character claims that she is secretive and guarded and yet can't seem to keep her mouth shut and spills her secrets anyway. This happened NUMEROUS times. For example, even when she clearly makes everyone around her promise to keep her secrets from Griffin's family, SHE IS THE FIRST ONE TO BLAB IT OUT. It took about 10 minutes into dinner for that to happen.

Uh huh. Guarded. Secretive. I see it. Of course the BIG secret needed to be kept because how else can we stretch it into a trilogy?

My other pet peeve is when self-sacrifice is taken to the extreme (*cough* Supernatural *cough*). Cat is supposed to be a strong, badass woman with amazing powers. And sure she makes use of some of them, BUT TO THE POINT OF DEATH. This happened not once, not twice, but a total of THREE times. She gets completely conked out and needs Griffin to take care of her. That seems to be the feminist response to the damsel in distress trope. We can't have the female be completely incompetent... so let's make her snarky and powerful, but still need a man to save her from the aftermath of it to keep the romance alive!

Why a 3 Star Rating?

For all my griping, I did enjoy the read. It was frustrating at times, and cringe-worthy at times, but I kept going and I was always interested to see what was going to happen next. Even though Kato & Flynn (the other members of Griffin's personal team) were practically identical characters, I ADORED the brother/sister relationship they had with Cat.

Even though I found the romance problematic and Griffin a little too high-handed, I was still invested. Until a certain plot detail cropped up. Then I totally lost it. [spoiler]Magical sexual healing??? WTF! Poseidon sent Cat a magical jizz man to heal her?![/spoiler] I managed to get through it though. Thank god for Ellen.

Even though I firmly believe that this book didn't have to be stretched into a trilogy, I am still willing to give the next 2 books a shot. Hopefully it gets better from here.

A Promise of Fire releases today. Happy reading everyone!

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.