Book Review: Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan
8:04:00 PM
Title: Tell the Wind and Fire
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan
Pages: 360
Genre: YA Dystopian/Fantasy
Release Date: 05 April 2016
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for review!
Tell the Wind and Fire is a very fast-paced new fantasy novel from author Sarah Rees Brennan. From the very first page, the book takes off and doesn't stop going until the very last page. I found it a bit difficult to keep up at the beginning, and felt like there was quite a bit of an info-dump in the first few pages. We are basically given all of the backstory about light/dark magic, light/dark cities, the separation of the two, and even an introduction to dopplegangers within the introduction to the story and while it is helpful to know these things, I felt it may have been better to space things out a bit more just to make it easier on the reader. This, however, did not take away from my reading experience and did not make me love this book any less!
While there does seem to be an overabundance of "two factions fighting against each other" in dystopian books/series, I really enjoyed the magical aspect of Tell the Wind and Fire. I do wish we had been able to learn more about the magicians, the types of magic that they use, as well as how they use it in their day to day lives, but there was just enough of a description to get through the book.
Lucie was an interesting character to read about. She was very clever with how she was able to obtain passage to the Light city and basically became a voice for the Dark city (despite her not knowing it). I liked that she advocated for equal rights for the cities, as well as dopplegangers. Which, speaking of dopplegangers, I really wanted Lucie and Carwyn to end up together, not Lucie and Ethan. But maybe that's just because I like the "bad boy" types in books.
I really enjoyed the aspect of the Light magicians needing the Dark magicians despite them being separated into two different cities. The Light magicians need the Dark magicians to drain them because their magic basically bottles up inside of them and will burn them from the inside out and the Dark magicians need the blood of Light magicians to live. It was a great twist to the way that things were set up in the story to discover that even though the Light magicians basically exiled the Dark magicians, they still needed them to live. That was one of my favorite aspects of the book, though not as heavily touched on as I would have liked.
The end of the book absolutely broke my heart, but all in all I really enjoyed this title. It was very well written, had some pretty great world building as well as character development, and it was overall just a very fun read. If you're looking for a great fantasy/dystopian read, then definitely check out Tell the Wind and Fire!
0 comments
Thank you so much for checking out my post! I'd love to chat, so please feel free to leave a comment :D