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A review by mspilesofpaper
Flame and Sparrow by S.M. Gaither
Did not finish book. Stopped at 51%.
DNF @ 51% (Chapter 31)
I started to read the book because it is likely the pick for the Page & Wick September box and I wanted to know if I can skip the box or not.
I can wholeheartedly say: this is the blandest bullshit that I have read in a very long time and it has no right to be 662 pages long as the Kindle edition.
Aside from the general boring blandness that could have been written as a 300-page book: the FMC annoyed me so much. I'm all in for flawed characters as long as they have a development arc but Karys ... Karys only survives by having plot armour and being the female main character who manages to bang a god. I have no idea why she thinks that she is a good actress and why she is even surprised that the court's gods know who she is. She's as transparent as a white t-shirt in a wet t-shirt contest.
The romance has zero evolution as the main male character appears very late, which makes the enemies-to-lovers trope rather useless. He doesn't even consider her as his enemy at any point. It's all in her head that they are enemies because her race was wronged by the Higher Gods. Due to his absences, it's pretty much instant love and by chapter 31, I didn't even get any of the spicy scenes. I suppose they will be as cringy as all the "tension-filled scenes" with them so far. Their banter is so fucking cringy as it is always sexual innuendos. I have the feeling that there will be a scene where he betrays her and she betrays him, and she will be mad at him for betraying her as if she didn't plan to do the same.
The world-building is 100% info dumping in never-ending monologues and the reader is still left with questions. The author brings up points where the reader would think that they would be important for later, but no ... they just vanish. Instead, the reader gets constant never-ending inner monologues about cooking and painting because the FMC is so quirky with her hobbies. She has a photogenic memory and excels at diagrams, so she can paint photorealistic images of people, scenes but also fucking building plans after looking at the building once. Cooking calms her down, btw. The worst is that the author rarely even mentions ingredients. It is always "[non-named ingredient A] could work well with [non-named ingredient B] as long as she will include [non-named ingredients C and D]". The constant never-ending monologues concerning the drawing, cooking and her anger (which she forgets half of the time) are the main reasons why the book is over 600 pages long. It needs professional editing to cut it down to 300 - 400 pages. As it stands now, it is just so long so the author would get paid more via Kindle Unlimited.
I started to read the book because it is likely the pick for the Page & Wick September box and I wanted to know if I can skip the box or not.
I can wholeheartedly say: this is the blandest bullshit that I have read in a very long time and it has no right to be 662 pages long as the Kindle edition.
Aside from the general boring blandness that could have been written as a 300-page book: the FMC annoyed me so much. I'm all in for flawed characters as long as they have a development arc but Karys ... Karys only survives by having plot armour and being the female main character who manages to bang a god. I have no idea why she thinks that she is a good actress and why she is even surprised that the court's gods know who she is. She's as transparent as a white t-shirt in a wet t-shirt contest.
The romance has zero evolution as the main male character appears very late, which makes the enemies-to-lovers trope rather useless. He doesn't even consider her as his enemy at any point. It's all in her head that they are enemies because her race was wronged by the Higher Gods. Due to his absences, it's pretty much instant love and by chapter 31, I didn't even get any of the spicy scenes. I suppose they will be as cringy as all the "tension-filled scenes" with them so far. Their banter is so fucking cringy as it is always sexual innuendos. I have the feeling that there will be a scene where he betrays her and she betrays him, and she will be mad at him for betraying her as if she didn't plan to do the same.
The world-building is 100% info dumping in never-ending monologues and the reader is still left with questions. The author brings up points where the reader would think that they would be important for later, but no ... they just vanish. Instead, the reader gets constant never-ending inner monologues about cooking and painting because the FMC is so quirky with her hobbies. She has a photogenic memory and excels at diagrams, so she can paint photorealistic images of people, scenes but also fucking building plans after looking at the building once. Cooking calms her down, btw. The worst is that the author rarely even mentions ingredients. It is always "[non-named ingredient A] could work well with [non-named ingredient B] as long as she will include [non-named ingredients C and D]". The constant never-ending monologues concerning the drawing, cooking and her anger (which she forgets half of the time) are the main reasons why the book is over 600 pages long. It needs professional editing to cut it down to 300 - 400 pages. As it stands now, it is just so long so the author would get paid more via Kindle Unlimited.