A review by bargainbinkazbrekker
Fireblood by Jeff Wheeler

1.0

well. when i originally put this one my tbr about 4 years ago i was intent on reading it and the sequel because i had copies of both (family copies i would not use my own money for this). but i am much nicer to myself than i was four years ago and i will not be forcing myself to read the sequel(s).
maybe i’ll come back once my thoughts have settled down and write more in depth but for now we’ll go with initial thoughts upon finishing.
what i liked
  1. the descriptions of the world, specifically of Mirrowen, were well done and provided some much needed atmosphere to the novel
that’s it. 

everything else (disliked and hated):

  1. racism. surprise! this was my biggest issue with the book! in a book where everyone has fancy fantasy names and races, you can imagine my absolute surprise and horror when i turned a page and say the word “Romani”. it only got worse; it’s like wheeler looked up every stereotype of Rroma and said “yes, that’s what i want in my fantasy novel. change the name? why bother!” the Romani in the book: steal and sell children, travel in caravans that stop outside cities where they steal, cheat, and rob. girl what???? why was this necessary— it’s wasn’t!!!! and the way wheeler didn’t even change the name, he was so confident in his bigotry that he wrote pretty much every stereotype about Rroma into his book and called them Romani, just in case we couldn’t catch what he was alluding to i guess. absolutely mind boggling to me.
  2. bad boring characters. for a more technical stand point (the book isn’t great from an actual plot and writing perspective, not just the bigotry), the characters are so BORING. i do not care about any of them, they feel so disjointed from any emotion, they rarely do anything, things just happen to them. how am i supposed to learn about this people? why won’t they *do* anything?
  3. dialogue. i couldn’t do it. it was like two ai’s trying to out human each other but failing. 
  4. and plot. i actually don’t remember it. 

anyway, 1 star for the descriptions, everything else was either hateful or just badly written!