Review: FIRELIGHT

Firelight by Sophie Jordan
Book 1 of the Firelight series
Narrated by Therese Plummer
Genre: urban fantasy YA
Format: audiobook CD

About Firelight:

A hidden truth.
Mortal enemies.
Doomed love.

Marked as special at an early age, Jacinda knows her every move is watched. But she longs for freedom to make her own choices. When she breaks the most sacred tenet among her kind, she nearly pays with her life. Until a beautiful stranger saves her. A stranger who was sent to hunt those like her. For Jacinda is a draki—a descendant of dragons whose greatest defense is her secret ability to shift into human form.

Forced to flee into the mortal world with her family, Jacinda struggles to adapt to her new surroundings. The only bright light is Will. Gorgeous, elusive Will who stirs her inner draki to life. Although she is irresistibly drawn to him, Jacinda knows Will's dark secret: He and his family are hunters. She should avoid him at all costs. But her inner draki is slowly slipping away — if it dies she will be left as a human forever. She'll do anything to prevent that. Even if it means getting closer to her most dangerous enemy.

Mythical powers and breathtaking romance ignite in this story of a girl who defies all expectations and whose love crosses an ancient divide.

Source: Info in the About Firelight was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6448470-firelight on 30/03/2012.

Review:

Okey so I bought this audiobook because I like listening to Therese Plummer. And the narration, is the most positive thing with this book. This book has so much promise and I really, really like the premise, but the plot and the story itself is so, so disappointing, I regretted having wasted my time and money with it!!

At the start of the first CD I can already see that Jacinda is too stupid to live (TSTL). But I persisted hoping that this TSTL trait would not run so deep, would not be so bad. I was wrong! Two adolescent drakis went on a dangerous escapade and almost got killed. Then Jacinda compounds that by being overconfident and got wounded. And it doesn't stop there. The entire book is peppered with a string of stupidity from cover to cover. I read the synopsis on the subsequent books and it looks like this trend continues through the entire series. The stupidity is so annoying it eclipsed the beauty of the world building, the mesmerizing voice of the narrator and the good story telling quality. That tells you just how TSTL Jacinda is! That there are times I wanted to shake Jacinda fiercely to knock some sense into her. Even I can see it was totally stupid. But our Jacinda, she can't see past her nose. Not only that, she's not only TSTL, but selfish to boot! Safe to say that I found it difficult to connect with this main protagonist. I think I would have cheered if the bad guys would actually catch her because then Jacinda would now actually get what she keeps trying to do! Would I recommend this book? This series? No. Don't waste your reading time. I don't know why the publisher wasted money on this book to begin with! But here is the real kicker, it ends in a cliffhanger...

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 2
Character development = 1.5
Story itself = 1.5
Ending = 2
World building = 3.5
Cover art = 4
Pace = (9hrs & 42min)
Plot = 1

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 cherries