Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Together We Burn

I really enjoyed this book. It started right of the bat VERY quickly into action, and while the majority of the book was not action, the fast pace continued. There is a lot of latinx culture represented here. In my limited experience with family and friends from Mexico, it seems really genuine. With an author of Bolivian descent I trust her expression of the culture on the page too! I really enjoyed getting to practice a bit of simple Spanish too. The phrases started off translated at the beginning and then translation tapered off or became loose. It was lovely to explore such a different fantasy world than your typical white European universe.

About the ending:

Around the first time the villain was introduced, i took a guess that it was him who was causing the issues. I did turn out to be correct. I dont think its really hinted that its actually him, i think ive just read enough to know to be suspicious. The ending was very fast paced. So much so that i was 20 pages from the end and sure this would have a sequel, but it all wrapped up nicely, though rushed. More pages could have been dedicated to the end. We had a huge buikdup to the arena event and got around half a page really. Thats my only conplaint!

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adventurous emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I'm not quite sure how to put into words what I thought of this book. I really wanted to love this book, I find the setting and premise really interesting, but it just fell flat for me. It took me nearly two weeks to read the first half and one day to read the second, if that says anything.

The first section of the book was just weirdly paced, I didn't feel drawn in or attached to the characters (I found the MC sooo insufferably annoying and out of touch to the point of it drawing me out of the story because I couldn't get on board with her points of view on things) and I just was not very interested in what was happening so found it super difficult to want to pick up the book and when I did, I was reading in very short stints. However I still wanted to finish the book and found that once I reached the 250ish page mark, I was a lot more drawn in. There was more happening, faster pacing, the characters started revealing things which improved the plot etc. and from there it got a lot better (except the time when (very small spoiler)

amongst all the other shit going on, Zarela complains about fucking washing and drying her hair saying its 'the worst thing in the world' like GIRL GET A GRIP

). I still found the plot a little haywire at best, but I at least was more attached to the story and wanted to keep reading, and I appreciated how the story ends.

Overall, I did like the setting and some of the side characters, but really struggled with the MC and that took away a lot of enjoyment of reading for me. If you're super intrigued by the plot and can handle explicit POVs and scenes related to supporting animal hatred/violence/killing for sport (not saying the author supports this or anything, but a lot of the book is actively pro these themes in regard to dragons) then I would say give it a go, keeping in mind that it gets a lot better in the last third of the book.

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