Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

Goodreads Summary

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*NO SPOILERS*

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This book was one I had gotten in one of my Owlcrate subscription boxes, I was excited when I got it and then never thought of it again. Because of the motivation Booktube-A-Thon has given me I read it and was glad I decided to add it to my agenda. I liked this book! It was cute and fun, with magic and mystery involved, although it was very heavy handed with the politics. This book has a lot of court politics and etiquette involved that put me off a little. I would have much rather seen more of the magical elements involved, and when they did pop up that storyline seemed to clash with the politics and romance. It seemed like the transitions between these three different types of scenes were rough and weren’t written properly. Other than that, I liked the story and the action of it all, chapters were short so it was easy to keep reading. My question is, why does every fantasy book have hard names to pronounce?? This whole book was filled with long, complicated strings of letters that the author passed for names. Most of the time I resorted to useing a nickname for he characters. I liked the storyline of this book and it reminded me why I love the fantasy genre so much. There were twists that were easy to see coming but there were a few that caught me by surprise. The characters were easily relatable and their personalities easy to get along with. Sometimes this book made me cringe, but it also made my heart melt, and it was awesome to feel something like that for a book! I wasn’t too keen on the cover, although I loved it when I finally understood the title completely. I will be keeping my eyes open for the next one!

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*SPOILER ALERT*

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First off, why did the king tolerate that kind of behavior from Mare? She is a princess so why didn’t he teach her to be one? I found that incomprehensible because she could have been taught from a young age and never been like that. I also didn’t understand why it was so important for Denna to have horse riding lessons. If she had never been taught then the people would have understood why she wasn’t a part of the culling. It seemed useless to teach her how to ride when all the did was basically herd the horses home. When time did come for Mare and Denna’s love scenes I felt like they were acting as if it were the end of the world because they couldn’t be together. I think they only fell in love because they knew it was forbidden and wanted to escape their futures. They both knew what would happen and how it would all play out because Denna has been betrothed SINCE SHE WAS SIX!! C’mon guys. You knew this. I definitely didn’t expect for Lord Kriantz to be the bad guy all along, but I guess I was too distracted by all these other things to figure it out. I don’t think that Thani makes a good king either because a good king would have seen all angles and been able to judge based on a level-headed answer. He was too blinded by rage and vengeance to see the evidence that was right in front of him, even when Mare literally threw it in his face. I really liked Denna’s character though and was glad she got out of that marriage and is finally free to train her magic and get to understand it. Although at the end when she brought the sky down on Kriantz and his men, I felt like it should have been more chaotic. We should have been able to see more inner turmoil from releasing this much magic. After everyone being so worried everything would be out of balance and someone would careen out of control, they made it seem like a bigger deal than it was. Let me know some of your thoughts on the book, and tell me if you can answer any of my questions!!

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Booktube-A-Thon review series: 2/7