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jgnoelle 's review for:
We Hunt the Flame
by Hafsah Faizal
Zafira is the Hunter of Demenhur—the only person who can withstand entering the cursed Arz forest that drives everyone else mad—which she does to hunt food for her starving community. Disguised as a man, Zafira does this in defiance of a fierce sultan who has strict views on a woman's proper place.
But the Arz is growing larger and more threatening, and the magic of the land that once contained it disappeared long ago. Zafira thus sets out on a dangerous quest to retrieve a lost artifact that can bring back magic and stop the Arz's advancement. Meanwhile, Nasir, son of the sultan and assassin so renowned he's known as the Prince of Death, has been sent to get the artifact himself—and to kill the Hunter while he's at it.
I liked that this book featured a world inspired by Middle Eastern mythology, as for so long the fantasy genre has been dominated by western settings. However from a storytelling perspective, this book didn't really work for me. Quest stories are generally very difficult to pull off—they typically involve a monotonous cycle of characters walking and talking/bantering with long descriptions of the setting interspersed by random dangers at regular intervals plus a romance.
Such is true for We Hunt the Flame. Although the opening chapters were quite exciting, introducing first Zafira, the hunter in hiding braving the enchanted forest, and Nasir, the troubled assassin stuck beneath of evil father's boot carrying out a hit that later haunts him, once the quest plot begins the book slows to a crawl until the last few chapters, which felt rushed as a result.
For the bulk of the plot there just wasn't not enough action, nor was there enough depth to the characters to compensate for this (although I did find Nasir's interactions with his light-hearted, flirtatious general, Altair, amusing and shipped them much more than I did Nasir and Zafira). Overall, despite the unique setting, there just wasn't enough in general to elevate an otherwise familiar and inherently unexciting plot trope into something more. Two and a half stars rounded to three.
But the Arz is growing larger and more threatening, and the magic of the land that once contained it disappeared long ago. Zafira thus sets out on a dangerous quest to retrieve a lost artifact that can bring back magic and stop the Arz's advancement. Meanwhile, Nasir, son of the sultan and assassin so renowned he's known as the Prince of Death, has been sent to get the artifact himself—and to kill the Hunter while he's at it.
I liked that this book featured a world inspired by Middle Eastern mythology, as for so long the fantasy genre has been dominated by western settings. However from a storytelling perspective, this book didn't really work for me. Quest stories are generally very difficult to pull off—they typically involve a monotonous cycle of characters walking and talking/bantering with long descriptions of the setting interspersed by random dangers at regular intervals plus a romance.
Such is true for We Hunt the Flame. Although the opening chapters were quite exciting, introducing first Zafira, the hunter in hiding braving the enchanted forest, and Nasir, the troubled assassin stuck beneath of evil father's boot carrying out a hit that later haunts him, once the quest plot begins the book slows to a crawl until the last few chapters, which felt rushed as a result.
For the bulk of the plot there just wasn't not enough action, nor was there enough depth to the characters to compensate for this (although I did find Nasir's interactions with his light-hearted, flirtatious general, Altair, amusing and shipped them much more than I did Nasir and Zafira). Overall, despite the unique setting, there just wasn't enough in general to elevate an otherwise familiar and inherently unexciting plot trope into something more. Two and a half stars rounded to three.