Fear the Flames Hardcover – 17 September 2024

I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard about this book until Bookstagram basically showcased it around in reels, promoting it as a great read for anyone that’s looking for a high fantasy, with dragons, enemies to lovers, stabby heroine, etc etc,.What made me curious was that the blurb of Fear the Flames sounded very different from what I thought it would. But dragons sounded great, so why not? I was surprised to see this book had released last year in November. The first question in my mind was “How come book two’s not out?”. (Not gonna lie, I’m still wondering that after having finished the book, I should probably look up the author’s profile or website for updates.)The book begins with a fairly high energy scene, that does some quick introductions, basic personality revelations of some of the main characters and begins the world building. Once I started the book, there was no looking back. The book was big—nearly 600 pages—and despite that, I was done faster than I would have estimated.The world building was really well done. Outside of the world being fairly simple, the rules were quickly explained and layered slowly over the course of the book. I loved that it wasn’t so complex, my thoughts turned to mush making sense of it all. I will agree, some things are not expanded upon, they just exist and are treated as so, but I presume they’re fairly irrelevant so far to the plot and are thus left unexplained.The main plot was very simple but everything that revolved around making it happen brought in a multitude of subplots; some of which are answered in this book and some which leave threads extending to be tied through the rest of the series. I did go in aware of the fact that the dragons don’t feature until towards the end of the book and I will say you should be prepared for that too. Despite that I feel I had an internal chant going on from about 75% that said “let’s get to the dragons let’s get to the dragons let’s get to the dragons”. Thinking back I wonder if I felt that because the author intended the readers to feel that by that point. If she did, she succeeded!If I’m not wrong, this book is the author’s debut. For a debut, the writing was a lot more…practiced than I would’ve expected, especially with how long the book is. The writing was easy to get lost into and it kept up with the pace fairly well. I would not say it was poetic but it has a certain charm to it that’s for sure.The platonic relationships in this book are *chef’s kiss*. They are the absolute best and have the potential to warm you to your toes. There are two types of friendships that that the author has represented: those already established outside the eyes of the reader and those that are established during the course of the book. Both were very well done and I loved watching them sprout, break, heal and blossom. The romantic relationship had a lot going on and many things work…but for me the insta-connect/lust can sometimes be a hit or miss. This time it was both, somethings about the relationship were a hit and some were a miss.The characters are many, but I loved that I knew every single one of them very well. The world building and writing worked really well together to ensure that all the important characters were introduced, described with a unique recognizable feature (not necessarily physical), and that was reiterated more than once until the characters stayed true in our minds. The FMC and MMC were interestingly similar and I loved watching them relate hard with each other on many fronts.I will say… I found many similarities between this book and Fourth Wing. Not like, oh, there are dragons here and dragons there. Actually, the dragons were the least similar parts. But many situations, dialogues, a name too seemed rather similar. I’m not sure what to think of it and I was surprised. Just to note that this book released last year in November. Maybe it’s all a coincidence…but if you’ve read the books, I think you’ll know what I mean.Four stars! Please check trigger warnings! The book is high fantasy with lots of violence, graphic content, reference to and recollection of torture etc. This book is available for FREE on Kindle Unlimited. Us KU subscribers are seriously living the dream out here.