Flood and Fire by Deirdra EdenMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Watchers series starts off with a spunky 13-year-old Auriella in Knight of Light, a struggling 19-year-old Auriella in Hidden Fire and now an immortal (I guess 60+ but she's immortal so who cares) Auriella in Flood and Fire.
If I were to summarise this third book in one sentence, it would be this: Auriella does a Bella.
Okay, fine. My review may have a 90% chance of being affected by Christmas grinchiness (sorry, reviewers are emotional too). As you can read from the book description, Auriella wakes up and finds that in her long absence, her One True Love, Azrael is missing. But not quite missing-missing, if you get what I mean. He has joined the ranks of Disappointed Literary Lovers who do Stupid Things (TM?), such as Romeo and Edward and, yes, Bella. (Sorry, Stephanie Meyer, I do not mean to diss your characters so much.)
And so, Auriella, in turn, attempts to Do Stupid Things, but because she's quite untrained in her powers and lacks this thing called Control, she doesn't exactly get to Do The Stupid Things she had in mind.
To be fair, this book is very enlightening in a way. It tells you very often the things that hold a person back:
1) Fear (of yourself and of others)
2) Being unable to control your emotions (especially anger), which in Auriella's case, often results in spontaneous combustion
3) Being overly single-minded in chasing after a goal (whether it's a loved one or it's revenge. As demonstrated in the book, this almost always ends in disaster when you neglect other important things. Like using your brain and not being distracted.
Still, since I am a fan of swashbuckling tales, I cannot deny that I enjoyed much of the setting of this book, even though Auriella could be singularly annoying, and Alamar was not as, uhm, *romantic* as he could have been. He felt a little like a caricature of a dashing Italian lover, but something lacked. I'm not sure what. Maybe it was his bullheadedness. Or the way conversations between Auriella and Alamar always devolved into something akin to a Christian vs Atheist debate (in form, not in content). Also, why does everyone's name seem to start with A?
Plotwise, there were a few nifty tricks and twists, some which I saw coming, some which I did not. At any rate, Flood and Fire ends at a good place, even if most of this book felt like a filler to make sure that Auriella gets the training she needs (though not the training she wants, ahahahaha). I'm guessing book 4 should get back to the main meat of the matter.
I received a free copy of this book from Eden Publishing in return for an honest review.
View all my reviews
Read my review of Book 1: Knight of Light
Read my review of Book 2: Hidden Fire
Buy on Amazon: Knight of Light | Hidden Fire | Flood and Fire
Buy on Smashwords: Knight of Light | Hidden Fire | Flood and Fire
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