Of Fire and Stars—Audrey Coulthurst

“But some things are stronger than years of freedom.The draw of fire.A longing for freedom.Or a girl on a red horse.”

Meh. This one wasn't really for me. I liked the general concept (what shades of it I got from the nearly-400 page book) and the whole "promised to the king but fall in love with his sister" lesbian romance aspect, and the writing was fine (not spectacular, but fine). BUT there were some fairly large drawbacks for me.

One: there was basically no worldbuilding. We're dropped into this fantasy setting, with kingdoms at war and making alliances and some sort of magic system that is vaguely described, but that's pretty much it. Going along with that, there was a whole lot of telling, and not a lot of showing. I know that sounds a bit weird when we're talking about a novel, but generally when I say this, I mean it in relation to emotions. There was a lot of telling us that people were feeling certain emotions, but not a lot that actually seemed to support those feelings. Specifically with this book, there was a lot of telling about what Mare and Denna liked about each other, without a lot of development of those traits themselves...if that makes sense.

Two: There was not a great deal of nuance when it came to the "good" versus "bad" folks. That might be fine for kids or middle grade, but when you've got lead characters in their late teens, a bit more nuance would be preferable for me personally.

Three: I'm over the whole "I have this gift but I don't know how to use it, until you put my feet to the fire, and then somehow miraculously I have control over it." It's a tired, lazy development device.

Four: These are two separate things, but they probably tie for my fourth least-favourite thing—the characters have names that I don't care for (one of the leads is called Amaranthine and goes by Mare, and guess which animal she's known to take care of? Other names include Thandilimon, King Aturnicus, etc.). And tied with that, I couldn't get over how one of the leads threw fits like a preteen, in spite of being 18 years old. Yikes.

A note on a specific plot point now, rather than the general points above, so beware, spoilers. The idea that Denna pulls stars out of the sky and they fall, in a controlled manner, and are only roughly the size of a carriage...like, WHAT?! Not to mention in that final "battle" scene, this line from Denna as the STARS ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY: "My focus remained on Mare, her limp form barely visible in the middle of the road. Love poured from me to shelter her, shunting the destruction away." PUH-LEASE. With all of that, the ending was very anticlimactic. I ultimately don't feel like that much happened, even the development of a full love relationship in the midst of everything else, and there was 400 pages of stuff.

So overall, I gave Of Fire and Stars 2 stars on Goodreads. (Which sounds bad, but is actually the "this was okay" rating on there.) This was an authorial debut, so I might read more from Coulthurst once it seems like she's really got her sea legs under her. My experience has been, even with authors I end up loving, their debuts don't tend to be masterpieces.