Scan barcode
A review by alassel
Into the Fire by Jeaniene Frost
3.0
I was poking around the internet and found this book had come out, so I picked it up yesterday and read it for some escapist fun on a rough day. I enjoyed the story, but I don't think it was nearly as good as the others in this series or in this universe, and it had a few problems.
One - the utter physical agony of the heroine got ridiculous. I believe it was one of the Cat & Bones stories by this author where I made the same complaint, though I'm not going to go flip through my reviews to double-check. Nevertheless, the constant and increasing physical agony that Leila went through during this book was just over the top and eventually made me start to skim those parts. The physical connection between her and Mircea (noted in the previous book) was interesting, as were some of the details around how that worked, but the last few scenes in the book were just so over the top I no longer cared if Leila (or Vlad, for that matter) lived through them. Blech.
Two - pretty much no sex scenes. I believe there were two token encounters between Vlad and Leila in the book, and neither one of them was that great. Honestly, I got more interested in Ian and his commentary and actions than I did for anything between Vlad and Leila, which is not good considering their all-encompassing love and passion is supposed to be the driver that gets them through the story. Given the previous level of awesome sex in this series and by this author, this book is a big disappointment in that department.
Three -hiding plans/secrets from each other. Sigh. Not this shit again. I'd really like to see plots that ARE NOT driven by "I'll hide FOOBAR from my beloved in order to protect them," because it NEVER ends well and it's just a sad trope at this point. I will say that Vlad's particular last hiding of something had severe consequences for someone else, and I'm much more interested in finding out what that character will end up doing because of it.
Overall, this was a fun read, but it wasn't up to the quality and standards of previous books in the story or the universe. There's some fun scenes, and some snappy dialogue and interesting powers (the human mages were particularly interesting to me), but really the secrets, overarching physical agony, and lack of sex made this a much more "meh" book for me than I had hoped.
One - the utter physical agony of the heroine got ridiculous. I believe it was one of the Cat & Bones stories by this author where I made the same complaint, though I'm not going to go flip through my reviews to double-check. Nevertheless, the constant and increasing physical agony that Leila went through during this book was just over the top and eventually made me start to skim those parts. The physical connection between her and Mircea (noted in the previous book) was interesting, as were some of the details around how that worked, but the last few scenes in the book were just so over the top I no longer cared if Leila (or Vlad, for that matter) lived through them. Blech.
Two - pretty much no sex scenes. I believe there were two token encounters between Vlad and Leila in the book, and neither one of them was that great. Honestly, I got more interested in Ian and his commentary and actions than I did for anything between Vlad and Leila, which is not good considering their all-encompassing love and passion is supposed to be the driver that gets them through the story. Given the previous level of awesome sex in this series and by this author, this book is a big disappointment in that department.
Three -hiding plans/secrets from each other. Sigh. Not this shit again. I'd really like to see plots that ARE NOT driven by "I'll hide FOOBAR from my beloved in order to protect them," because it NEVER ends well and it's just a sad trope at this point. I will say that Vlad's particular last hiding of something had severe consequences for someone else, and I'm much more interested in finding out what that character will end up doing because of it.
Overall, this was a fun read, but it wasn't up to the quality and standards of previous books in the story or the universe. There's some fun scenes, and some snappy dialogue and interesting powers (the human mages were particularly interesting to me), but really the secrets, overarching physical agony, and lack of sex made this a much more "meh" book for me than I had hoped.