Scan barcode
A review by melissa_leigh
The Flame and the Arrow by Emigh Cannaday
slow-paced
1.0
The Flame and the Arrow has got to be one of the worst books I've ever read. For a book to be about another realm full of elves, fairies, ogres, wood nymphs, and vampires, you'd think it would be full of wonder and magic but nope! It was incredibly boring, full of pages upon pages of nothing interesting happening. There are countless of pages where characters are just cleaning up the house, gathering wood, doing laundry, gossiping about nonsense and so on.
The main romance and is just unbearable. I suppose Annika is fine. She's from the human world and gets thrust into this other place near the beginning of the book. She just takes everything almost without blinking, though, and it was very strange that she was just accepting it all with barely any questions. Talvi, the love interest, was an obnoxious character. He spent most of the book being a complete baby to the point where everyone around him wanted him to just leave. I can't understand why Annika even liked him other than he being mysterious and attractive. The romance scenes made me burst into laughter sometimes for how cringy they were. And when I wasn't laughing, I was skimming those pages just so I could try to finish the book faster.
The "plot" has multiple characters making a journey to a distant land to gather intel about their enemies or something along those lines. I can't really remember because of how little the "plot" serves. The last maybe 30 pages is where that even comes into play and this book is over 400 pages long. I love longer books when they are interesting but almost nothing about pointless things happened here. (There is an entire subplot that lasted multiple chapters of the party cleaning up a stranger's house....)
SPOILER BELOW
There's a prophecy that gets brought up almost 200 pages in and the payout was worthless. We learn that the main love interest, Talvi, was destined to find love through Annika. His twin sister, Yuri, was destined for "something much darker." Turns out she was meant to die, which happened very abruptly like 15 pages before the books ends, only for her to come back to life the very next page. It was lame. Annika makes it back to her world right after and the book ends.
The only reason I didn't stick this in my abandoned shelf halfway through is because I wanted this to count toward my reading challenge. I do not recommend.
The main romance and is just unbearable. I suppose Annika is fine. She's from the human world and gets thrust into this other place near the beginning of the book. She just takes everything almost without blinking, though, and it was very strange that she was just accepting it all with barely any questions. Talvi, the love interest, was an obnoxious character. He spent most of the book being a complete baby to the point where everyone around him wanted him to just leave. I can't understand why Annika even liked him other than he being mysterious and attractive. The romance scenes made me burst into laughter sometimes for how cringy they were. And when I wasn't laughing, I was skimming those pages just so I could try to finish the book faster.
The "plot" has multiple characters making a journey to a distant land to gather intel about their enemies or something along those lines. I can't really remember because of how little the "plot" serves. The last maybe 30 pages is where that even comes into play and this book is over 400 pages long. I love longer books when they are interesting but almost nothing about pointless things happened here. (There is an entire subplot that lasted multiple chapters of the party cleaning up a stranger's house....)
SPOILER BELOW
There's a prophecy that gets brought up almost 200 pages in and the payout was worthless. We learn that the main love interest, Talvi, was destined to find love through Annika. His twin sister, Yuri, was destined for "something much darker." Turns out she was meant to die, which happened very abruptly like 15 pages before the books ends, only for her to come back to life the very next page. It was lame. Annika makes it back to her world right after and the book ends.
The only reason I didn't stick this in my abandoned shelf halfway through is because I wanted this to count toward my reading challenge. I do not recommend.