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atrailofpages 's review for:
Heart of Night and Fire
by Nisha J. Tuli
This is more of a 2.5 star read for me than 3, it did not quite live up to my expectations.
There is a blight on the land that is spreading that no one knows where it came from. The Chiranjivi are emissaries from Rahajhan and are the most powerful magical beings on the continent who are trying to solve the problem of the blight.
Zarya is an orphan and has lived by the ocean in a cottage with her guardian Row and his apprentice Aarav where she’s spelled to stay and can never venture outside of the small area around the cottage. One morning, her and Aarav wake up to find Row gone, but his sword and horse are still there. Aarav leaves to find him, and Zarya tries to leave and finds out she can, that the magic holding her back is gone. So, she takes advantage of it and leaves.
What I did like, is the diverse representation in this book, I loved reading about the clothes, the food, and the culture. I loved the different mythical creatures, the mythical beings, and the different magic and people that are in this world. There is definitely a world in this book, with different types of people and beings, and a magic system that is based on elements. I just wish there was more world building than there was. There are a lot of characters, that are all very different and diverse, different types of beings who use different magic or different elements for their magic.
Aside from that, I basically did not really enjoy the rest of the book. The primary reason I am unable to give this more stars as the main character Zarya. I did not like her from the beginning. She is just mean, just a plain mean person. I understand that she was basically kept in the cottage for 20 years, but her guardian told her there’s a reason, he’s protecting her, and that he had made a promise to someone. Instead of being grateful for being taken care of all these years, she always kept talking about how she wanted to unalive her guardian and her basically foster brother. She is supposed to be 20, almost 21, however, she acts like she’s 13 years old, acts very ungrateful, very disrespectful to everyone, and has a very hot temper that she just allows to run rampant and just be mean to everyone. And for some reason, everyone likes her. I cannot comprehend why all the characters liked her, and would say I’ll unalive him for you, when they don’t even know her as a person.
Which brings me to another thing about this book that was hard for me to accept is the pacing and how the characters meet and how the relationships are developed. When Zarya is taken to the Palace, they let her live there, and they all become friends, which made no sense to me because what makes her so special? Why her? And everyone just liked her. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, except for Yansen, he was the broody moody male character that I always like, and I actually like the way their friendship developed, but he’s literally the only character that I actually liked. All the other characters weren’t developed well enough, it felt very rushed, a lot of the characters just didn’t make sense to me with how they interacted with Zarya, and everyone just seem to think that unaliving someone was the answer to everything that went wrong or bad.
And the romance is basically nonexistent. There are some moments between Zarya and another male character, but that was just her needing affection, or just wanting that intimate moment with someone and so she just chose the first person she meets even though she says she’s smarter than that and wouldn’t just fall head over heels for the first male who looks at her, but which is what she did. The romance may develop more as the series continue, especially since there’s clearly an obvious character that would become romantic with her, but it was barely touched on in this book, even though it says that it’s a very addictive, slow, burn romance, so I guess it is a very slow burn, because it didn’t even happen in this book and must happen as the series progresses.
I’m really bummed that I did not enjoy this book as much as I was expecting to. I love the author’s other books, but this one just felt very rushed, like there was a deadline to write this book and it’s very obvious. Maybe the series gets better as it progresses, and maybe the main female character becomes more tolerable, but it was so hard for me to get through this book and so I don’t think I can continue reading the series.
This is not saying that others won’t like this book, I think a lot of people would actually really enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t for me based on the way it was written, and when I don’t like the main character, it kind of ruins the book for me.
I received a feee digital copy to read. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
There is a blight on the land that is spreading that no one knows where it came from. The Chiranjivi are emissaries from Rahajhan and are the most powerful magical beings on the continent who are trying to solve the problem of the blight.
Zarya is an orphan and has lived by the ocean in a cottage with her guardian Row and his apprentice Aarav where she’s spelled to stay and can never venture outside of the small area around the cottage. One morning, her and Aarav wake up to find Row gone, but his sword and horse are still there. Aarav leaves to find him, and Zarya tries to leave and finds out she can, that the magic holding her back is gone. So, she takes advantage of it and leaves.
What I did like, is the diverse representation in this book, I loved reading about the clothes, the food, and the culture. I loved the different mythical creatures, the mythical beings, and the different magic and people that are in this world. There is definitely a world in this book, with different types of people and beings, and a magic system that is based on elements. I just wish there was more world building than there was. There are a lot of characters, that are all very different and diverse, different types of beings who use different magic or different elements for their magic.
Aside from that, I basically did not really enjoy the rest of the book. The primary reason I am unable to give this more stars as the main character Zarya. I did not like her from the beginning. She is just mean, just a plain mean person. I understand that she was basically kept in the cottage for 20 years, but her guardian told her there’s a reason, he’s protecting her, and that he had made a promise to someone. Instead of being grateful for being taken care of all these years, she always kept talking about how she wanted to unalive her guardian and her basically foster brother. She is supposed to be 20, almost 21, however, she acts like she’s 13 years old, acts very ungrateful, very disrespectful to everyone, and has a very hot temper that she just allows to run rampant and just be mean to everyone. And for some reason, everyone likes her. I cannot comprehend why all the characters liked her, and would say I’ll unalive him for you, when they don’t even know her as a person.
Which brings me to another thing about this book that was hard for me to accept is the pacing and how the characters meet and how the relationships are developed. When Zarya is taken to the Palace, they let her live there, and they all become friends, which made no sense to me because what makes her so special? Why her? And everyone just liked her. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, except for Yansen, he was the broody moody male character that I always like, and I actually like the way their friendship developed, but he’s literally the only character that I actually liked. All the other characters weren’t developed well enough, it felt very rushed, a lot of the characters just didn’t make sense to me with how they interacted with Zarya, and everyone just seem to think that unaliving someone was the answer to everything that went wrong or bad.
And the romance is basically nonexistent. There are some moments between Zarya and another male character, but that was just her needing affection, or just wanting that intimate moment with someone and so she just chose the first person she meets even though she says she’s smarter than that and wouldn’t just fall head over heels for the first male who looks at her, but which is what she did. The romance may develop more as the series continue, especially since there’s clearly an obvious character that would become romantic with her, but it was barely touched on in this book, even though it says that it’s a very addictive, slow, burn romance, so I guess it is a very slow burn, because it didn’t even happen in this book and must happen as the series progresses.
I’m really bummed that I did not enjoy this book as much as I was expecting to. I love the author’s other books, but this one just felt very rushed, like there was a deadline to write this book and it’s very obvious. Maybe the series gets better as it progresses, and maybe the main female character becomes more tolerable, but it was so hard for me to get through this book and so I don’t think I can continue reading the series.
This is not saying that others won’t like this book, I think a lot of people would actually really enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t for me based on the way it was written, and when I don’t like the main character, it kind of ruins the book for me.
I received a feee digital copy to read. All thoughts and opinions are my own.