The Boy with Fire is an Indian-inspired epic fantasy with magic, royalty, and morally grey characters. Yassen, a boy on the run. Elena, a Princess who can’t wield fire. And Leo, the King struggling to stop things he can’t control.

     The characters were my favorite part of the book. Leo, Samson, and Ferma were my favorites. I always love morally grey characters and this book definitely gave me that! I also really liked that, although there were lots of different fantasy terms, I hardly ever got confused by them. And some of the book’s fight scenes were highly entertaining.

     However, speaking of the fight scenes, we’ll start getting into the things I didn’t like about the book. 

     There were too many unnecessary scenes that didn’t move the story along at all. I enjoyed one or two of the fight training scenes, but there shouldn’t have been so many if they weren’t integral to the story. I feel like the author had lots of scenes that didn’t add anything to the plot, but when things were important and needed to be explored, they were only mentioned once and never brought up again.

     Leo’s point of view was my favorite. One of the reasons for that is because he’s my absolute favorite character, but mainly because every Leo chapter moved the story further along, Elena and Yassen’s chapters kept the story stagnant. I found myself tuning out a lot during their chapters because there were so many unneeded things discussed. All Elena’s chapters did were show her try to learn to yield fire to no avail. And all Yassen’s chapters did were nothing… I can’t remember a thing I gained from reading one of his chapters till almost 70% into the story. And don’t even get me started on the last eight chapters of the book. Those eight chapters could’ve been reduced to only two. That ending was so drawn out and boring, I had to skim through till I was done just to get it over with.

     And my last complaint is that there was no main storyline. Each individual point of view had its own storyline, but they never came together to make one central storyline or one central goal or obstacle between those three characters. Every one just had their own plot that barely coincided with the others.

     Overall, even though I had lots of complaints, I enjoyed this. I liked Leo, Samson, and Ferma so much that they made up for all the other things I didn’t like about the book. After reading those last chapters of the book, I just knew I wasn’t going to continue the series. But after reading the epilogue, I just might. The epilogue intrigued me back into the story, so I’ll at least give the second book a chance!

Thank you to Netgalley and New Degree Press for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW: death/murder, burning, and suicide