Cav's Place

Full disclosure: I received this book through a giveaway on The StoryGraph. This has in no way influenced the opinions expressed in this review.

To be blunt, that notice shouldn’t even be needed when I have to say that what I appreciated in Blood and Flame mainly has to do with what isn’t there rather than what is. To say that I wasn’t particularly bothered by anything specific that was presented or took place may sound like praise, and to some extent it is, but what I actually made mental notes of was being relieved when the entire time spent by the main characters in their respective Academies was treated as mere background information and rushed through in two chapters, one for each of them, and definitely, and much more importantly, the fact that the romance was treated as perfectly normal, without any case being made over its “kind” at any point, which is just how it should be. Other than that, sure, the book is easy to read and the focus on the action and the way the characters get through it all avoids any moments when it may get either tedious or too tense, so you should be able to read it quickly.

Unfortunately, that’s more of a relief than an actual positive remark, because even those aspects mentioned above come with serious caveats. The romance is just poorly written and developed, and while it may be said that, refreshingly, that’s not the focus of the book, the action is, and that’s not much better either. It largely reads like going through a checklist of challenges that the author probably believes the characters are “supposed” to go through in such stories, some of them quite clearly inspired by the works that form the basis of the fantasy genre but without any of the associated impact. You may worry about the outcome once or twice, but soon enough it’ll be clear that they’ll actually be quite fine regardless of how things look, and while healing abilities provide the means to get away with a lot, hero’s luck and powerful magic that’s explained far too little play a large role.
As for everything else… I’m tempted to ask what “everything else” may there be to talk about. This is just a swashbuckling adventure in a fantasy setting, sword and sorcery at a level that I’d say couldn’t even be described as “young adult”, but more like something meant for teenagers. That impression is strengthened by the other characters reacting to noticing potential romantic moments in ways that seem more suitable for a high school setting, which setting would also be more fitting for the behavior of the other attendees during those chapters that rush through Dara and Wynne’s time at their respective Academies, but the main problem is the lack of depth and detail. The worldbuilding is quite rudimentary, the magic system leaves ample room for explanations that aren’t provided, the writing style is, for lack of a better term, workmanlike, getting the job done but pretty much exhausting any potential to do any more than that after the first two paragraphs, the dialogues just don’t feel right, and any character except Dara and Wynne hardly has any depth. Not that they offer anything like what such characters should offer from that point of view either, especially when they’re supposed to develop quite notably over the course of the book and yet it just doesn’t feel like they do. Plus that the initial contrast between them is way too forced… And then there is the issue of what is revealed to them, which is far too blatant and obviously known by too many to need to be revealed in such a manner, to not be sufficiently common knowledge for a sizable resistance movement to already exist. Or, if that was crushed, for a resigned acceptance on a large scale.

To conclude, the rating may seem a little harsh when Blood and Flame isn’t necessarily a bad book, but there are hardly any reasons to recommend it. It may be a decent read for teenagers, or maybe for some young adults who are rather undemanding and perhaps also less experienced with the fantasy genre, but for anyone else it probably can’t be more than a pretty quick and easy way to increase the number of books read by one. The idea behind it may have some potential, but it’s lacking in pretty much every aspect when it comes to actually realizing it and, while being the first of a planned series leaves room for things to improve and may even provide a justification for some of the missing explanations, it’s far from enough of an excuse and it doesn’t offer enough of a motivation to want to continue.

Rating: 2/5