Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan (Audiobook) It is a rare day when I am completely floored by a book. Tell the Wind and Fire was sent to me by the publisher (Quite a surprise to me, I might add) When I first got it, I glanced at the cover, breezed over the blurb, threw it on the “maybe” pile, and forgot about it. A few weeks later, someone nudged me saying how good it was, but I still ignored. But now I am sitting in my chair with a huge gape on my face.
This is probably going to be in contention for the best book I’ve read this year. It’s a complicated story that I will try to explain concisely, but I doubt I can do it justice.
We are in New York City in a dystopian future. New York is governed by wielders of “light magic”. Next to New York is the Dark City, where the dark magicians live (in poverty).
Lucie is caught between two worlds, a light magician from the dark city. She gains some celebrity when she saves her father from an execution, and then is used as a political pawn of both sides of a war between the two cities.
This is a retelling, which I should have realized on the first page, but I didn’t make the connection until the last half-hour of the book. The world-building in this book is exemplary. You spend a great deal of time (maybe 60%) inside Lucie’s thoughts. Where this might have been annoying, for me it was grounding as the thoughts flowed freely, in a believable way.
My only real problem with this style, was that I wanted to really feel the emotion of the pivotal ending scene… but with Lucie contemplating the way the world was about to change, I think we lost some of the raw emotion of what happened at the end. Still, that did not stop me from thinking about this book for days after I’d finished. For some reason, this resonated with me. I’m really glad I decided to give it a chance. This is a book you should not hesitate to put on your TBR.
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I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed it, but I think it was the overall premise of “The Taking” at night and how the humans had to wear blindfolds that bothered me. While it was explained, I never really bought in to the overall premise, which left the story falling a bit flat and unbelievable to me.
This novella really can’t stand on its own. The Selection process is not explained or defined, and situation and characters happen in this book that you would have no idea what is going on unless you’ve read the first book. Also, the writing and world-building is nowhere as deep and intricate as the full novel. But that isn’t really a problem, since its target audience would have read the first book.
The characters for the most part, are 14 and up, put with all the teasing and really young behavior and actions, they all sounded more like nine year olds (Comparing them to my own kids who are 10, 12, and 15)
The only problem is, Dimitri has no magical powers. He has to figure out how to do what his master wants (Including murder) in a given amount of time, or he will experience intolerable pain.
The main character is a girl that is raised by a family of demon-like people, and her job is to collect teeth for one of them.
However ROGUE did deliver on a satisfactory ending to the current conflict, all the while introducing a totally new one that I can look forward to in the next book.
Book one, “Storm” was about the brother who can control water. Spark, if you hadn’t guessed already, is about the brother who can control Fire. I read book one as a free read last year (or maybe a discounted read. I don’t remember. It was a BookBub find), and I was really surprised how much I loved it. I am even more surprised how much I loved the second book.
Plot: Maddy, an oil heiress, is snatched for ransom on a tiny island she is camping on. Luckily for her, she told her hot Navy SEAL friend where she was camping, and asked him to meet her there. Boy, are those kidnappers sorry when Bran and his buddy show up!
Jennifer M Eaton 