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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3 stars because my mind kept wavering while reading this i couldn't stay focused? maybe this is just me and my mind but still it affected how i feel..
Personnage préféré : Yasmine
Avis : Je crois que mon erreur en lisant ce livre, c’est de l’avoir commencé quand j’étais malade ; ça a pas mal affecté ma lecture parce que j’ai dû lire le début, où beaucoup d’informations y sont mises, sans rien comprendre ni retenir parce que je n’étais pas dans le monde état.
Je pense que c’est aussi pour ça que j’ai mis plus de temps que d’habitude. Mais quand j’ai atteint la deuxième partie, où se détache de la présentation pour entrer dans l’aventure, ça a mieux été et j’ai pu vraiment profiter de cette lecture.
Je pense qu’en relisant ce livre, je pourrais lui donner les cinq étoiles parce que je le trouve vraiment bien et les révélations de la fin m’ont vraiment prise par surprise. Et j’ai vraiment, vraiment hâte de lire le deuxième tome, parce qu’il promet !
“A life without purpose may be no life, but a life without love is nothing but an existence.”
Avis : Je crois que mon erreur en lisant ce livre, c’est de l’avoir commencé quand j’étais malade ; ça a pas mal affecté ma lecture parce que j’ai dû lire le début, où beaucoup d’informations y sont mises, sans rien comprendre ni retenir parce que je n’étais pas dans le monde état.
Je pense que c’est aussi pour ça que j’ai mis plus de temps que d’habitude. Mais quand j’ai atteint la deuxième partie, où se détache de la présentation pour entrer dans l’aventure, ça a mieux été et j’ai pu vraiment profiter de cette lecture.
Je pense qu’en relisant ce livre, je pourrais lui donner les cinq étoiles parce que je le trouve vraiment bien et les révélations de la fin m’ont vraiment prise par surprise. Et j’ai vraiment, vraiment hâte de lire le deuxième tome, parce qu’il promet !
“A life without purpose may be no life, but a life without love is nothing but an existence.”
3.75
The writing is so beautiful. The characters I loved so much. But the pacing was erratic. A character dies way too early on after which the plot goes back to being painstakingly slow until the last third where you’re bombarded with revelations/plot twists one after the other.
The writing is so beautiful. The characters I loved so much. But the pacing was erratic. A character dies way too early on after which the plot goes back to being painstakingly slow until the last third where you’re bombarded with revelations/plot twists one after the other.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I have no idea what to rate this. Throughout my entire reading experience, I’ve debated between 3, maybe 4 stars? Maybe a 3.5? I honestly don’t know if I can condense my feelings into a star rating. I think I’m just gonna settle on a very loose 4 stars.
I had barely any idea what this book was about, since I don’t read the descriptions for books anymore. All I know is that it was really hyped up when it came out, so I was excited to read it. But my feelings throughout this book rose and fell while I was reading, from confusion to enjoyment, from love to frustration.
Like I said before, I had no idea what this book was about going into it. So, it took a while for me to actually understand what was going on, what the character’s motivations were, why certain actions happened, etc. This continued throughout the entire book: characters did certain things and I didn’t know why, new plot points emerged and I just... rolled with it. But the weird thing is, with this book, I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about having confusion while reading, I didn’t care about the flaws in structure or pacing (however, this book is VERY slow paced, hence why it took me my WHOLE VACATION to read it). Because the other elements of this book were so strong for me that the other stuff just didn’t matter.
One of those elements was the writing style. I LOVED IT so much. It was so beautiful, so poignant, so lyrical. I only wish I could write half as food as Hafsah Faizal. The way she strung words together was so beautiful and wise. It truly was a delight to read.
Another thing that stood out to me was the characters. Since this book is pretty long, and it’s really slow paced, we get a lot of time to know the characters. Zafira is such a badass, Nasir had a great character arc, and Altair is so funny. I loved watching them interact with each other and watching them become friends. Just like the writing style, the characters were beautiful and I *might* read the sequel just to see where they end up.
This book was so weird because like I was confused half the time and I didn’t think the plot was super original (see my status update about it being the same plot as Children of Blood and Bone), but for some reason, I just really enjoyed reading this.
☞ 4 stars
I had barely any idea what this book was about, since I don’t read the descriptions for books anymore. All I know is that it was really hyped up when it came out, so I was excited to read it. But my feelings throughout this book rose and fell while I was reading, from confusion to enjoyment, from love to frustration.
Like I said before, I had no idea what this book was about going into it. So, it took a while for me to actually understand what was going on, what the character’s motivations were, why certain actions happened, etc. This continued throughout the entire book: characters did certain things and I didn’t know why, new plot points emerged and I just... rolled with it. But the weird thing is, with this book, I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about having confusion while reading, I didn’t care about the flaws in structure or pacing (however, this book is VERY slow paced, hence why it took me my WHOLE VACATION to read it). Because the other elements of this book were so strong for me that the other stuff just didn’t matter.
One of those elements was the writing style. I LOVED IT so much. It was so beautiful, so poignant, so lyrical. I only wish I could write half as food as Hafsah Faizal. The way she strung words together was so beautiful and wise. It truly was a delight to read.
Another thing that stood out to me was the characters. Since this book is pretty long, and it’s really slow paced, we get a lot of time to know the characters. Zafira is such a badass, Nasir had a great character arc, and Altair is so funny. I loved watching them interact with each other and watching them become friends. Just like the writing style, the characters were beautiful and I *might* read the sequel just to see where they end up.
This book was so weird because like I was confused half the time and I didn’t think the plot was super original (see my status update about it being the same plot as Children of Blood and Bone), but for some reason, I just really enjoyed reading this.
☞ 4 stars
Some parts of this book were so good. And other parts so bad 😭
The writing in this book is so beautiful, I just wanted to keep tabbing and tabbing until my fingers hurt. The only problem I have with this book, and admittedly it’s my own personal hang up, is the fact that the Arabic words used are not the correct feminine/masculine forms and it drove me INSANE. I’m sure she intended for them to be gender neutral because it’s the “old language”, but I was distracted by them. This book is really pretty and I loved the world building, the only reason I’m not giving it a full 5 stars is the fact that a) both the main characters are so whinyyy and b) it got a little too slow at parts. I plan on reading the second one I enjoyed the 3rd act of this book more than the first 2 combined.
adventurous
dark
hopeful
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘴! 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬 :)
۶ৎ 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐩. we hunt the flame follows the story of two individuals- zafira, a huntress pretending to be a man, approached by a witch who swears that she can restore magic to the world and save zafira's village, and nasir, the son of the sultan and an assassin who is sent on the same mission to restore magic and also to kill zafira. along with a few others, they do manage to bring magic back, but free the evil lion of the night in the process.
۶ৎ 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.
➝ 𝐳𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐚. zafira suffered from a serious case of y/n syndrome throughout the entire story anyway, since she's somehow connected to the lion of the night and also has powers hidden in her and then she starts hearing voices n shit, but when it came to nasir every single aspect of her strong rebellious personality just disappeared. she was a blushing mess and was just like "uwu nasir you're hurt let me climb in your lap and touch your abs uwuwuwuwuwu." like ma'am wtf. dare i say she had more chemistry with altair (even though it's clear that the author was trying to pair him up with kifah.)
➝ 𝐧𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐫. nasir treated zafira like SHIT the whole time, he was so back and forth with liking her and then remembering that he's supposed to kill her but then not wanting to kill her because he likes her but then pushing her away because he's not supposed to like her.
۶ৎ 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭. to be quite honest, i'm not really sure what happened in this book at all. the writing was very beautiful and suuuuper descriptive, but it was almost too much. it felt like a textbook at times and was very hard to follow. i genuinely couldn't read more than like 40-50 pages at a time and i was constantly going back and re-reading things because i just couldn't process it the first time. i appreciate the writing style and it's a warm welcome compared to the "plain" writing that occurs a lot in ya books, but it was really just overdone and i'm not sure that it really matched the feel of the story.
the plot was all over the place too and i honestly don't think i could give an accurate plot summary even with a gun to my head. it was like the author had 50 different ideas of what could happen in the story and somehow managed to include all of them. it was just plot twist after plot twist and half the time there was no real buildup to these twists. for example, act 3 of the story opened up with zafira being captured by the lion of the night and waking up in his house, but when act 2 ended it was just zafira being overwhelmed by emotions and losing hold on her compass-like abilities, leaving them stranded. there was literally no bridge between the two events at all. things like that happened all over the story and made it really hard to follow, since one moment you think you know what's going on and then suddenly it's entirely different.
the characters felt really flat and there wasn't much connection between them even though the author tried really hard to make the reader feel like there was. the premise of the story was entirely misleading because it makes it seem like it's just zafira and nasir going on this journey, but magically they become a group of five and they're all related to each other in some way. like benyamin and nasir are cousins (though not really) and altair and benyamin know each other and are like spy buddies???? but there was no real feelings of camaraderie between them whatsoever. even when benyamin died, these people who supposedly really love and care for him with lots of history between them just don't really give a shit. additionally, the romance between zafira and nasir just fell flat on it's face.
on top of all of this, the magic system in this world just wasn't explained properly and i don't understand the point of any of it. there's six sisters who were really powerful but then five of them died and magic was lost forever. this cursed the land i guess? because somehow this one section of the desert became snow (even though every other caliph was desert and stayed that way) and then like the caliph with the most fertile soil suddenly couldn't produce product anymore (yet they were still the leaders of produce in every other caliph). and then there's the arz, which is like this evil forest that's just slowly eating the land and will end society, but not once is it ever actually explained what the arz actually is. it's like dark creepy spooky forest that people enter and get lost in and then die, but also it can turn people evil too because it happened to zafira's dad and they had to kill him? but zafira is the only one immune to this because she's a magic compass? but it doesn't explain how she's immune to the other evil parts of it ever???? like what.
۶ৎ 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬. overall this story was just a hot mess from start to finish. the journey itself took up most of the book but that was just these people bantering during the day, coming across some monsters and killing them, then having benyamin lore drop at night and having everyone be like 'wtf' and then somehow it's all good the next day. i just couldn't follow what was going on, the plot twists were absurd and so frequent that i couldn't even manage to be surprised by them anymore, and the romance aspects felt forced and awkward. HOWEVER, it's not the worst book i've ever read in my life so i don't feel that it deserves the lowest rating possible. i did enjoy act 1 when everything was still in the beginning stages, and then ending has left me wanting to know what happens next, so i'll read the second book just to get it over with. honestly though, i wouldn't recommend this to anyone at all. it's not worth your time.
1.5★
۶ৎ 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐩. we hunt the flame follows the story of two individuals- zafira, a huntress pretending to be a man, approached by a witch who swears that she can restore magic to the world and save zafira's village, and nasir, the son of the sultan and an assassin who is sent on the same mission to restore magic and also to kill zafira. along with a few others, they do manage to bring magic back, but free the evil lion of the night in the process.
۶ৎ 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.
➝ 𝐳𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐚. zafira suffered from a serious case of y/n syndrome throughout the entire story anyway, since she's somehow connected to the lion of the night and also has powers hidden in her and then she starts hearing voices n shit, but when it came to nasir every single aspect of her strong rebellious personality just disappeared. she was a blushing mess and was just like "uwu nasir you're hurt let me climb in your lap and touch your abs uwuwuwuwuwu." like ma'am wtf. dare i say she had more chemistry with altair (even though it's clear that the author was trying to pair him up with kifah.)
➝ 𝐧𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐫. nasir treated zafira like SHIT the whole time, he was so back and forth with liking her and then remembering that he's supposed to kill her but then not wanting to kill her because he likes her but then pushing her away because he's not supposed to like her.
۶ৎ 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭. to be quite honest, i'm not really sure what happened in this book at all. the writing was very beautiful and suuuuper descriptive, but it was almost too much. it felt like a textbook at times and was very hard to follow. i genuinely couldn't read more than like 40-50 pages at a time and i was constantly going back and re-reading things because i just couldn't process it the first time. i appreciate the writing style and it's a warm welcome compared to the "plain" writing that occurs a lot in ya books, but it was really just overdone and i'm not sure that it really matched the feel of the story.
the plot was all over the place too and i honestly don't think i could give an accurate plot summary even with a gun to my head. it was like the author had 50 different ideas of what could happen in the story and somehow managed to include all of them. it was just plot twist after plot twist and half the time there was no real buildup to these twists. for example, act 3 of the story opened up with zafira being captured by the lion of the night and waking up in his house, but when act 2 ended it was just zafira being overwhelmed by emotions and losing hold on her compass-like abilities, leaving them stranded. there was literally no bridge between the two events at all. things like that happened all over the story and made it really hard to follow, since one moment you think you know what's going on and then suddenly it's entirely different.
the characters felt really flat and there wasn't much connection between them even though the author tried really hard to make the reader feel like there was. the premise of the story was entirely misleading because it makes it seem like it's just zafira and nasir going on this journey, but magically they become a group of five and they're all related to each other in some way. like benyamin and nasir are cousins (though not really) and altair and benyamin know each other and are like spy buddies???? but there was no real feelings of camaraderie between them whatsoever. even when benyamin died, these people who supposedly really love and care for him with lots of history between them just don't really give a shit. additionally, the romance between zafira and nasir just fell flat on it's face.
on top of all of this, the magic system in this world just wasn't explained properly and i don't understand the point of any of it. there's six sisters who were really powerful but then five of them died and magic was lost forever. this cursed the land i guess? because somehow this one section of the desert became snow (even though every other caliph was desert and stayed that way) and then like the caliph with the most fertile soil suddenly couldn't produce product anymore (yet they were still the leaders of produce in every other caliph). and then there's the arz, which is like this evil forest that's just slowly eating the land and will end society, but not once is it ever actually explained what the arz actually is. it's like dark creepy spooky forest that people enter and get lost in and then die, but also it can turn people evil too because it happened to zafira's dad and they had to kill him? but zafira is the only one immune to this because she's a magic compass? but it doesn't explain how she's immune to the other evil parts of it ever???? like what.
۶ৎ 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬. overall this story was just a hot mess from start to finish. the journey itself took up most of the book but that was just these people bantering during the day, coming across some monsters and killing them, then having benyamin lore drop at night and having everyone be like 'wtf' and then somehow it's all good the next day. i just couldn't follow what was going on, the plot twists were absurd and so frequent that i couldn't even manage to be surprised by them anymore, and the romance aspects felt forced and awkward. HOWEVER, it's not the worst book i've ever read in my life so i don't feel that it deserves the lowest rating possible. i did enjoy act 1 when everything was still in the beginning stages, and then ending has left me wanting to know what happens next, so i'll read the second book just to get it over with. honestly though, i wouldn't recommend this to anyone at all. it's not worth your time.
1.5★