Review by hanaramaa - Fireborne

hanaramaa 's review for:

Fireborne by Rosaria Munda

4.5

adventurous challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Much of what you'll be doing, as Guardians, will be

deciding which is the lesser evil. Who lives, who dies. It will be-it should be-a terrible burden.

I devoured this book in 24hours 🙈 it was almost everything I look for in a fantasy story!

It was fast paced, genuinely kept me guessing where the plot would go next, and constantly subverted my expectations - it kept me on my toes!

I LOVED the 2 POVs that cleverly showed you 2 friends from 2 opposing starts, and their drives, motivations, and thoughts about eachother.

It has great world building, focusing on a civilization trying to find the best way to govern 10 years after a revolution removed the previous Royal rulers from power.

I really enjoyed the political aspect of the world, it focused heavily on the social class system as well as that futile feeling of battling injustice, and the helplessness of realising there with always be sacrifices in war, it often being the poorer of the citizens.

Dragons are always a big green tick for me, and I wasn't disappointed. We follow trainee dragon riders competing for a prominent position. The bond with their riders was interesting and the sparring scenes were great - it really focused on how the dragon riders get burnt! Which is often conveniently ignored in other stories...

Clever writing flitting between the past and present. The author did this particularly well in an emotional scene - I rarely cry while reading but this choked me up.

Pros
- found family
- oh the internal conflict
- complicated and layered characters
- political intrigue
- slow burn romance as a subplot (more focus on the plot)
- twisty turny and not easy to guess what will happen next
- some beautiful writing

Cons
- characters too young for their responsibilities to be believable. If they were in their early 20s it would have been more realistic
- too brief at times - the author could have padded out some areas and given us more. There was one very emotional and dramatic moment that although was beautifully written, it was waaaay to brief
- more dragons in the next book pleaseee

Overall I loved this and can't wait to read the next 2!

Bring what fury you have and I will answer it with ours.

Content Warnings