The Burning Sky

“This is the story of a girl who fooled a thousand boys, a boy who fooled an entire country, a partnership that would change the fate of realms, and a power to challenge the greatest tyrant the world had ever known. Expect magic.”

2 STARS

Hmm, where to start? This book troubled me. I was so interested in the world, and so engaged by the characters, but the writing just threw me. It seemed almost archaic, but not, and sometimes not even seeming like English to me, but it totally was. The prose was definitely not my favorite and it kept making me slip out of the book again and again and stare off into space or just read the words and not feel the story, you know? I definitely loved Iolanthe and was alright with Titus, but things just had such a slow pace I almost put it down quite a few times. I'm glad I didn't because it picked up in the end near the climax, but I'm not sure if I'm going to read the next book and following sequels in the series. One thing I absolutely loved in this book was the Crucible. It held stories well known and fables of mythology solely revolving around the world within, that of mages and magic and magnanimous queens. I liked that it was a teaching platform both on battle strategies and on academic research that produced replicas of the past princes and princesses to teach the heirs. I loved how captivating the individual vignettes of stories were and I especially loved battling with Helgira and her lightning and wyverns. The entire ending was well done and well paced, for once in the book. Maybe it was just the time at Eton that seemed drab to me, but I just couldn't get past it. I tried and I tried but I struggled like Iolanthe in the honey as she tried to produce a breeze of wind to knock the password down from the beam above. The beginning scene led me to expect so much more from this book than that which I received. I understand that Thomas had a great deal of world building to cover, but not only was I slipping out of the story but when I was fully in it I barely understood what was going on. How did they know about the non-mage worlds? How are the connected? Who is the Bane? So many questions and very few answers, and they were almost all exclusively given at the end in very vague, short descriptions. I liked that we got to see from both Iolanthe and Titus' perspectives, however Ihated how choppy it was for the transition. I couldn't get with it and when I tried to smooth out the lines, it would jump again. I wish that there had been some spacing or something to help guide the reader through the chapters, but it just seemed to get worse and worse throughout the book. Though the writing was elevated, as I said before, I wonder if it was too elevated, especially when it came to Titus and his seemingly abhorrence of using contractions when everyone else around him used them flawlessly. I'm not saying that it's the worst book I've ever read, but I don't think I'll be returning to the second book unless I have some major convincing from friends and people I'm following on goodreads. I had such high expectations for this book, but I think it just had too many factors working against it for me: pacing, writing, poor secondary characters with way too many name drops, and a slippery plotline. This also might be because I've read so much fantasy recently and I'm comparing it to so many other wonderful novels in this genre, but I'll never really know. Either way, it just wasn't for me.