Review: Firelight

Firelight

Sophie Jordan

Publisher: HarperTeen

Release Date: September 7, 2010

Pages: 336

Ratings: 2 Stars

Summary (from Goodreads):

With her rare ability to breathe fire, Jacinda is special even among the draki—the descendants of dragons who can shift between human and dragon forms. But when Jacinda’s rebelliousness leads her family to flee into the human world, she struggles to adapt, even as her draki spirit fades. The one thing that revives it is Will, whose family hunts her kind. Jacinda can’t resist getting closer to him, even though she knows she’s risking not only her life but the draki’s most closely guarded secret.

Firelight was an intriguing concept that was not executed in the best way. I really wanted to love this book because the idea of this race of people descended from dragons called draki was something that struck me as very fresh and interesting. However, I was deeply disappointed in Firelight.

For me, Firelight was Twilight. Seriously. I am not a huge fan of Twilight and I  dislike when things are compared to Twilight but the whole time I was reading about Jacinda and Will, I couldn't stop drawing the comparison. The relationship between Will and Jacinda was very reminiscent of Bella and Edward. At one point, Jacinda even says that Will is an “addictive drug”, something to keep her draki alive while it is slowly dying from the harsh, desert environment. Sounds eerily familiar to Bella being Edward’s brand of heroin. At times, Jacinda and Will’s relationship seemed a bit rushed and all over the place. The focus of all the characters was mainly on Jacinda and Will and I felt like all the secondary characters got pushed into the background and were only brought back up again when need and were never fully developed. Along with that, I felt Will and Jacinda were very one-dimensional and I could not see past Jacinda’s narration. Everything revolved around her and her problems and at points I just want her to stop complaining so the story could continue. I was glad to see that towards the end of the book, though, that Jacinda started to change and see past herself and accept other people’s emotion, she started to become a stronger character I could respect a bit more.

While I really enjoyed the idea of Firelight, the writing was constantly distracting me. I felt like the entire book was composed of very short, fragmented sentences that distracted me from enjoying the book. I was engaged by the draki way of life and wanted to know more about the hunters and draki, but the writing kept getting in the way. I frequently had to read this book in short bursts because the writing would annoy me and take away from my enjoyment of the story.

The ending of the book was a bit anticlimactic. I felt like for the first novel in a series, Firelight did not leave a strong enough impact. I was left with more questions at the end of the book than I would have liked and I really wished that more descriptions about draki and draki life were provided in the first book. A first book in a series needs to wow me to make me interested in continue reading the series. Unfortunately, that was not the case with Firelight. I might check out the sequel to see what happens next and to see if more is explained but I won’t count on it.