Let me start off by saying that there's a reason why I've rated this book 3 stars, and despite this mostly being a critical review, I think there's a reader out there for every book, and that some people will like this, but it's just not for me. I'll begin with the critical portion, but I won't be bashing the book the whole way, so stick with me here. The book does quite a lot of rather fascinating things in its storytelling!



My biggest issue with the book is its tell-not-show style of presentation. In the very first chapter, we're hit with a dense description of each character, which blocked the flow of what I considered a fairly interesting start to the book. I found it tough to connect emotionally with the characters, and as much as I liked the idea of the romance between the main leads Dara and Wynne, the execution meant it wasn't particularly compelling. The magic system seemed fine when first introduced, but I was a little disappointed that we never spent much time learning how it actually worked? Usually, I like soft magic systems but this approach to it isn't my favourite.



That said, I loved a certain character in this book, who was definitely the life of the party and wonderful to have around. In fact, I liked quite a lot of the side characters, including an absolute badass that shows up later on. Perhaps it's because I didn't have the same expectations of them as I do for the main leads?



My mixed feelings about this also extend to the dialogue. It could be quite blocky and awkward, not sounding particularly natural. Strangely, certain characters did speak more smoothly than others. Unfortunately, many of the 'bad guys' had such blocky speeches that I couldn't really take them seriously. While the dialogue in this book tended toward being stilted, it did have its moments, and there were times when I got really wrapped up in it.



Now why did I still give it three stars instead of something lower? Well, about a third into Blood and Flame, I was hit by the sudden realisation that this world was rather D&D-inspired. And the more I thought about it and the more I read, the more I thought: This is an RPG campaign but in the form of a novel. I'm not sure how much of that was in the author's mind when he wrote this novel, but looking at it from this perspective helped to explain quite a lot. The clear and highly visual descriptions of the characters and places, the way the magic system was designed, the general feel of the book, all of these elements that felt a little strange came together in a way that I think does work. It's far from perfect, but there's a lot of potential.



Finally, if there's one thing that this book has done really well, it's the fight scenes. Each setting is fun and unique, and the fights are choppy, fast, and brutal. Some questions came up during these fights that I'm curious to know the answers to, in addition to the other questions I already have about Mana, which means I might actually pick up the next book in the trilogy when it comes out…



If any part of this book sounds interesting to you, it's available now, and you can pick it up from your local store or library!

Review: My first thought upon requesting this novel was "I am going to regret this". You know, the olde "read all of my ARCs, now have nothing to do at night" rigamarole. Am I right? This novels description was pulled from the herring barrel of story lines that litter the halls of fantasy. "Poor wittle waif, working in mines but has powerful enough magic to become the greatest mage EVER!". Yawn. Really?

How did the writing stack up against the others that have waded the same plagiaristic waters? Rave reviews for most of this authors work did not translate into this installment. Nothing set it apart from the cliche'd narrative that tramples this genre. The writing style is very simple with emotions purveyed via verbal interchanges and "grumbled/mumbled" descriptors. Also, this turned out to be super gay and should have been noted by the publisher.

The best and only thing about this novel is the creative use of magic and the Fae population. The characters still lack depth as the movement does nothing to improve them. You end up not caring what happens to them when they are constantly blushing / crushing, stealing glances and groping around. Are all YA's gayer than a bag of hammers?

I received this ARC for an honest review.

I enjoyed the overall story, worldbuilding, and characters of this book. Dara and Wynne were fantastic, each struggling to find their way against the stations that they had been born into in life. I enjoyed the introduction to the characters.

The worldbuilding was good. I liked the monsters, especially the Jackals. The monsters aren't exactly what we think of when we hear the names jackals and sirens, for example. They have been re-imagined for the purposes of this book.

The overall religion and magic integration was well done, along with the corruption of such by man. I won't put more because of spoilers.

However, the book did also have some issues. It was overly reliant on telling instead of showing, along with long-winded description. I found myself skimming several parts, especially in relation to armour and whatnot. This had the problem of it really dragging the pacing down at times.

I also thought it was very heavyhanded in what seems to be a moralistic and ethical treatise of religion vs organised religion with the Quinate vs Quinarium - the religion against the institution that has become corrupted and evil, committing atrocities.

Overall, I think the series has promise, and I look forward to seeing where it's going, although I think there's enough foreshadowing that I may have figured some things out.

3.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I think this fantasy was decently crafted. I think there are things that I would have preferred more from it. To be honest, there was a more “tell” than “show” element to the world-building of this novel. A lot of the time, especially in the beginning, we have characters just information-dumping the basics of how this world works. I wanted more descriptions of examples of that instead of just long speeches that basically told me what was happening. When we meet each of our main characters, there is always another character there to describe the status and past of them. I wish we were shown that more. I do think the hatred of people who are lower class in society, like Dara, was heavy-handed bullying in a very over-the-top, archetypal way. There were also some language/grammatical issues, but they were not the end of the world, especially since this is only an ARC.

The Quinate is an interesting idea, and I definitely see the religious aspect for this series working. You can always have a good plot revolving mysteries and intrigue around a church that has garnered a lot of faith from the people in this world, but there being things that do not quite add up.

Dara and Wynne were definitely my favorite part of this novel. I loved the way they were built-up and came together. Sapphic stories are something I am always looking for when I read, so I am glad this was in there because it was a major bonus. I enjoyed how they had to go out and investigate for their “rite”. I love intrigue when it comes to fantasy novels and did think the plot itself was an interesting one.

Overall 3.5 stars for me. There is a lot of potential to build in this world and story, and I will gladly see what is next.

A decently done sword-and-sorcery fantasy in many ways, marred by serious mechanical issues, but with a more original world than some I've seen. However, it's also not completely to my taste, being more dystopian and darker than I personally prefer.

The author has a bad dangling-modifier habit, sometimes leaves the past perfect tense out of sentences that really need it, occasionally chooses a word that doesn't quite have the right connotation for the context (or just sounds similar to the word he means) or uses the wrong preposition in an idiom, and makes several other common errors, like hyphenating an adjective and its noun. As always with books I get for review via Netgalley, I must note that I haven't seen the final published version, and there may yet be more editing to come, though there's a lot to work on.

The author is also one of those people who likes to use other words as alternatives to "said," and chooses some odd ones, including "drolled" (probably by mistake for "drawled"), "cut" (not "cut in," just "cut") and "spewed". He repeatedly says "at the aft" when he just means "aft" or "at the stern." A quirk I've seen elsewhere, but never so much, is that he misses the "-ed" ending off some short verbs that end in "t" when putting them in the past tense. I've often seen "spit" used as the past tense instead of "spat" and "grit" instead of "gritted" (as in teeth), and have put it down to a dialectal variation, but I don't believe I've seen "flit" or "jut" or "rest" used this way before.

Add this to the frequent lack of past perfect tense when referring to something that happened before the narrative moment, and the author's habit of using the phrasing "X did A when Y did B" when it should be "X was doing A" or "X had done A," and it becomes challenging at times to parse how the action is taking place in time in order to envisage the action. Point of view also tends to wander sometimes between the two main characters within the same scene.

These issues aren't on every page, by any means, but when they do appear, they distract from what is a decent story about engaging characters. Certainly, there's nothing here that is completely unexpected, though the worldbuilding shows some originality. Monsters, even if they have familiar names like "Jackals" and "Sirens" (all species names, including "Humans," are capitalized for some reason), aren't what you're expecting from those names, and aren't just an existing monster under a new label, either. The humans (or Humans, if you insist) are vegan, while the Fae aren't, which is a low-level conflict between people of those two origins; although there is a leather gauntlet early on, I think that's just a slip, since it's described as "cloth" a couple of sentences later.

The church is dystopian, because of course it is, though unlike most real corrupted religious organizations it doesn't seem to go in for large-scale sexual abuse, thankfully. Or if it does, the characters we follow don't encounter it. It mostly just lies about history and commits ethnic cleansing. <spoiler>A somewhat cartoonish antagonist, a church official, virtually foams at the mouth when he sees the main characters wearing leather boots, but a few hours later is plotting genocide, which involves rationalizing a false-flag operation which will lead to the death of innocents from his own village. I know real people do have this level of hypocrisy sometimes, but it challenged my suspension of disbelief slightly because of the juxtaposition of "fanatically vegan, but also plotting mass murder of intelligent beings".</spoiler> I don't like dystopian, so that took my overall enjoyment down a little, along with the gory tragic battles.

On balance, while it showed potential and some originality, it wasn't quite the kind of story I love, and the many language issues were a big distraction for me. Those factors combine to take it down to a three-star rating, and keep it off my recommendation list for 2025. It was good enough that I finished it, but not so good that I'd read another.