Review: Flame of Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

Kaliel and Krishani weren't meant to meet or fall in love but they did. Krishani’s dreams of death lead him to a fate he’s terrified of - becoming the next Ferryman. His only refuge is Kaliel, the peculiar girl that swims with merfolk and talks to trees. Kaliel has a secret of her own. She’s the Amethyst Flame, one of nine apocalyptic weapons. The Valtanyana will destroy everything on Avristar to get to her. Kaliel has to choose: face them, hide or unleash the Flame.

How far would you go to save everything you ever loved?

eBook, 280 pages

Received from NetGalley (first published October 6th 2011)

(summary grabbed from GoodReads)

Flame of Surrender takes place in the ethereal country of Avristar: a high fantasy world of elves.  High fantasy isn’t my normal genre, and usually I find high fantasy dry, so I tend to avoid it.  Nevertheless, I still was intrigued by the blurb about Flame of Surrender on NetGalley.  I wasn’t disappointed as the story was extremely imaginative and had great prose, but I did have some hiccups while reading.

As I said before, the world is incredibly imaginative.  The problem I had, though, was that it was sometimes hard to follow.  I thought that the author could have gone into a little more introduction about the world so it would be easier for the reader to keep what-is-what straight.  This may have been more of an issue for me particularly since I don’t normally read high fantasy, which commonly incorporates vast and elaborate lands.  At the same time, however, the reader should never feel lost and more than once was I flipping back in my e-reader to check if I had missed something (but normally I hadn’t).

As with any book labeled YA, the romance is an extremely key element.  Though I thought the romance was cute, it felt rushed.  Their initial attraction was sweet, but the build up over the time spent apart seemed… unrealistic.  The intensity of their pining for each other seemed a little much for having had such a brief meeting.  I only found it slightly annoying and not enough of an issue for me to put the book down.

The only full criticism (the other criticisms were only half) I have is that the pace is way too slow.  There seemed to be a lot of lengthy build up for elements that were not important, and it felt like nothing was happening for quite a long stretch in the beginning.  When the characters do reunite and it seemed like the story would start to pick up, it still didn’t.  I found myself losing interest as it felt the plot had barely moved since beginning the book.

Overall, Flame of Surrender was well written and set in greatly creative world.  However, it was another book that I desperately wanted to love, but found myself barely liking.

Final Thought: 15 out of 30 magical toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads