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A review by foreverinastory
Together We Burn by Isabel Ibañez
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Thank you to Wednesday books and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
2.5/5
Ugh this was such a chore to read.
Together We Burn is a Spanish inspired high fantasy. The world of Hispalia has an ancient tradition of dragon fighting. Zarela Zalvidar is a talented flamenco dancer and the daughter of the most famous Dragonador. When catastrophe strikes during their 500th anniversary performance, her father is gravely injured and La Giralda is left in almost complete ruin. Zarela has no choice but to take over running La Giralda and face her fears of dragons in order to keep her family's business running.
This was hard for me to read because of the animal cruelty towards dragons. Plus Zarela has such an apathy towards them and it just really put me off this book. Plus then we also get a good heaping of sexism, misogyny and traditional gender roles and I'm just so tired of that shit showing up in fantasy. Can we not imagine a better world than that?
I didn't particularly care about Zarela or her romance. Though I did like Arturo, the love interest. He's super grumpy and he's against dragon fighting completely. I didn't really see the chemistry or appeal for him to like Zarela but whatever, I'm not stressing over it.
The ending was predictable but it annoyed me that the option did not occur to Zarela until like 80% into the book. Really? All this time to finally use some common sense?
Ultimately, I did not particularly like this, and I wouldn't really recommend it, but the cover is pretty.
Rep: All Spanish inspired cast, cishet female MC, cishet male side character with a permanent injury from dragon fighting.
CWs: Kidnapping, fire/fire injury, death, death of parent, murder, sexism, misogyny, grief, violence, blood, animal cruelty, animal death. Moderate: sexual content.
2.5/5
Ugh this was such a chore to read.
Together We Burn is a Spanish inspired high fantasy. The world of Hispalia has an ancient tradition of dragon fighting. Zarela Zalvidar is a talented flamenco dancer and the daughter of the most famous Dragonador. When catastrophe strikes during their 500th anniversary performance, her father is gravely injured and La Giralda is left in almost complete ruin. Zarela has no choice but to take over running La Giralda and face her fears of dragons in order to keep her family's business running.
This was hard for me to read because of the animal cruelty towards dragons. Plus Zarela has such an apathy towards them and it just really put me off this book. Plus then we also get a good heaping of sexism, misogyny and traditional gender roles and I'm just so tired of that shit showing up in fantasy. Can we not imagine a better world than that?
I didn't particularly care about Zarela or her romance. Though I did like Arturo, the love interest. He's super grumpy and he's against dragon fighting completely. I didn't really see the chemistry or appeal for him to like Zarela but whatever, I'm not stressing over it.
The ending was predictable but it annoyed me that the option did not occur to Zarela until like 80% into the book. Really? All this time to finally use some common sense?
Ultimately, I did not particularly like this, and I wouldn't really recommend it, but the cover is pretty.
Rep: All Spanish inspired cast, cishet female MC, cishet male side character with a permanent injury from dragon fighting.
CWs: Kidnapping, fire/fire injury, death, death of parent, murder, sexism, misogyny, grief, violence, blood, animal cruelty, animal death. Moderate: sexual content.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Grief, Kidnapping, Murder, Sexism, Animal cruelty, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Misogyny, and Violence
Moderate: Sexual content