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A review by rlstrayer1
Firebolt by Adrienne Woods
2.0
1.5 stars
**I received a free eBook in exchange for an honest review**
I was very excited to read this book. Dragons? Yes please! School setting? Awesome! YA? I'm sold. Basically, I couldn't wait to get started. Unfortunately, this book suffered from the "great premise/bad execution" syndrome and greatly disappointed me.
The basic plot summary: Sixteen year old Elena finds out that her dad is not actually human...he is a dragon. Sadly, the same day she finds out this intriguing bit of information is the same day he is killed by a group of evil rogue dragons. Elena is taken to a medical ward of sorts, except this medical ward is not in the world you and I live in, but rather in the land of Paegia...the land of dragons and their riders, known as Dragonians. Elena is enrolled into Dragonia (basically Hogwarts for dragons and Dragonians). From here, she's thrust into a new world and a new social order in which she has to integrate and prove herself.
If this book had been marketed as a middle grade book, I believe it would have done much better than as YA. The dialogue was incredibly stilted and juvenile. The only time I knew that something was funny or humorous was because the characters laughed. There was a lot of random bits of imagery that made no sense to the story, and at times were just plain inappropriate.
For example, one of the characters gets roughed up by a dragon, and the author's description?
"It looked as if she had been beaten by a jealous boyfriend"
Um, what?? Why was this put in? What did it accomplish? It made me mad that the author thought this was appropriate, that's what it did.
Another scene described the characters going to the lake for a late night swim. The MC didn't have a swimsuit, so she borrowed her friend's bikini.
"I picked up a plain black one and tried it on. It fit perfectly. I just didn't like my flat ass. I wanted it to be plumper."
There were random phrases like those mentioned above sprinkled throughout the book. They didn't add anything to the book, and seemed to be put there just to fill space. They also made Elena out to be a whiny, childish character who had no sense of the greater world out there.
Speaking of which, I swear she was either yelling or crying on every single page. And for the first half of the book she was constantly in danger of losing her sanity because....reasons? The author never really went into that and I would have liked to know why. I assume it's because for a normal person, to find out that dragons actually existed would be a huge thing to mentally process...but I don't feel like it would cause insanity *shrugs*. I mean, if I found out that dragons actually existed my jaw would drop to the floor and then I would be jumping for joy because HELLO FREAKING DRAGONS EXISTED. But maybe that's just me.
There was barely any mention of her father dying either. You would think that would be incredibly traumatic and would be worth mentioning how it affected the MC, but it was hardly mentioned at all. Elena had moments of missing her dad, but overall it was almost like he never existed.
Another issue I had was the insta-love. I absolutely ABHOR insta-love. I ABHOR IT I TELL YOU. I love seeing a friendship blossom before anything else. It allows me to be more invested in the characters and their relationship and to cheer them on to a happy ending. Sadly, this was not the case. The only reason Elena and her Boyfriend ended up getting together was because he was hot. Seriously. She even has moments of self-doubt when she hears that he has no qualms about beating dragons to get them to submit, but then he gives her his million-watt smile and all is right with the world. I also see a love triangle looming on the horizon, which I also cannot stand. While being tutored by the other point of the predicted love triangle, Elena was "lost in his eyes" and "want[ed] to grab and kiss his mouth".
This is about 50% of the book so far. All of the above happened before the halfway point.
There was a part where they talked about how their stone dragons would awaken when there was trouble....
The 0.5 stars this book is getting is due to the fact that there are dragons. Dragons are my kryptonite and I will read anything and everything about them.
I will not be continuing on in this series. I have read some reviews on the next several books, and it doesn't seem to get much better in terms of character development. I'm saddened, because the premise of this series is awesome. I wish the execution was just as great.
**I received a free eBook in exchange for an honest review**
I was very excited to read this book. Dragons? Yes please! School setting? Awesome! YA? I'm sold. Basically, I couldn't wait to get started. Unfortunately, this book suffered from the "great premise/bad execution" syndrome and greatly disappointed me.
The basic plot summary: Sixteen year old Elena finds out that her dad is not actually human...he is a dragon. Sadly, the same day she finds out this intriguing bit of information is the same day he is killed by a group of evil rogue dragons. Elena is taken to a medical ward of sorts, except this medical ward is not in the world you and I live in, but rather in the land of Paegia...the land of dragons and their riders, known as Dragonians. Elena is enrolled into Dragonia (basically Hogwarts for dragons and Dragonians). From here, she's thrust into a new world and a new social order in which she has to integrate and prove herself.
If this book had been marketed as a middle grade book, I believe it would have done much better than as YA. The dialogue was incredibly stilted and juvenile. The only time I knew that something was funny or humorous was because the characters laughed. There was a lot of random bits of imagery that made no sense to the story, and at times were just plain inappropriate.
For example, one of the characters gets roughed up by a dragon, and the author's description?
"It looked as if she had been beaten by a jealous boyfriend"
Um, what?? Why was this put in? What did it accomplish? It made me mad that the author thought this was appropriate, that's what it did.
Another scene described the characters going to the lake for a late night swim. The MC didn't have a swimsuit, so she borrowed her friend's bikini.
"I picked up a plain black one and tried it on. It fit perfectly. I just didn't like my flat ass. I wanted it to be plumper."
There were random phrases like those mentioned above sprinkled throughout the book. They didn't add anything to the book, and seemed to be put there just to fill space. They also made Elena out to be a whiny, childish character who had no sense of the greater world out there.
Speaking of which, I swear she was either yelling or crying on every single page. And for the first half of the book she was constantly in danger of losing her sanity because....reasons? The author never really went into that and I would have liked to know why. I assume it's because for a normal person, to find out that dragons actually existed would be a huge thing to mentally process...but I don't feel like it would cause insanity *shrugs*. I mean, if I found out that dragons actually existed my jaw would drop to the floor and then I would be jumping for joy because HELLO FREAKING DRAGONS EXISTED. But maybe that's just me.
There was barely any mention of her father dying either. You would think that would be incredibly traumatic and would be worth mentioning how it affected the MC, but it was hardly mentioned at all. Elena had moments of missing her dad, but overall it was almost like he never existed.
Another issue I had was the insta-love. I absolutely ABHOR insta-love. I ABHOR IT I TELL YOU. I love seeing a friendship blossom before anything else. It allows me to be more invested in the characters and their relationship and to cheer them on to a happy ending. Sadly, this was not the case. The only reason Elena and her Boyfriend ended up getting together was because he was hot. Seriously. She even has moments of self-doubt when she hears that he has no qualms about beating dragons to get them to submit, but then he gives her his million-watt smile and all is right with the world. I also see a love triangle looming on the horizon, which I also cannot stand. While being tutored by the other point of the predicted love triangle, Elena was "lost in his eyes" and "want[ed] to grab and kiss his mouth".
This is about 50% of the book so far. All of the above happened before the halfway point.
There was a part where they talked about how their stone dragons would awaken when there was trouble....
The 0.5 stars this book is getting is due to the fact that there are dragons. Dragons are my kryptonite and I will read anything and everything about them.
I will not be continuing on in this series. I have read some reviews on the next several books, and it doesn't seem to get much better in terms of character development. I'm saddened, because the premise of this series is awesome. I wish the execution was just as great.