I won a copy of Lyn Lowe‘s novel, Burnt, from Disincentive Reviews.
Description from Goodreads:
Fate rips Kaie from the life he planned and thrust him into a world of slavery and casual brutality. Faced with the destruction of everything he knew and hiding from a society that turns those born with magic into mindless creatures called Hollows, he’ll have to discover the difference between being a good man and surviving a bad situation. The gods themselves have turned their cruel attention to teaching him the true meaning of sacrifice, in all its horrible forms. He will be forged in fire and death, and everything he loves is up for grabs. For he is the Catalyst…
“You will see everything you care about ripped away five times. You will lead men into battle five times, three will leave you broken. You will murder five who deserve it and five who do not. You will die five times. You are the phoenix who will father dragons.”
Review:
I won this book some times ago and should probably start off by apologising for taking so very long to read it. Having finished it I can honestly say that it deserves some reader attention. There’s a really good story developing in this book. I imagine as an epic series it will be quite something, but as a stand alone book it seems to be lacking a little something.
It starts out well. The reader meets the main character and his two best friends, there’s a pretty potent prophesy or destiny handed down to him and then almost immediately slavers come to the village and….and everything essentially comes to a screeching halt. Didn’t see that coming? Me either. Right where you think the action is going to really pick up it drops down and dragggggs. I’m not saying that nothing happens, quite a bit happens. If this book was 600+ pages long and written just as it is I would have no complaints. Then this whole slow, adjusting to slavery section would be the middle third instead of the last two thirds of the book. But it’s not, which means that after being tempted with the promise of action and heroics we are then given emotional turmoil and the daily tasks of a slave. Even the introduction of the Hollows mentioned in the description is literally introduced in the last 5 or so pages.
The whole thing also feels very Greek. There is a lot of people sacrificing themselves to save their loved ones only to subsequently destroy them with the same well-intended actions. It was all very heart breaking and tragic. There isn’t a lot of happy time to counter all of the dark moments either.
I found myself wondering at the intended audience. It reads very much like a YA book with one major exception, sex. As a YA book you wouldn’t really expect there to be any and there isn’t any actual sex depicted. The reader just knows that it has occurred. Its use is one of the most interesting aspects of the book. It’s not very often that an author is able to successfully present subtly different uses of sex, sex as a weapon, sex as conciliation, sex as a good-bye. But Lowe manages that here without even seeming to try. I would almost call this a sub-theme of the book. I enjoyed it, but couldn’t really reconcile it with the tone of the rest of the book.
All in all, I found the premise of the book really interesting. I’d like to know what happens as the series progresses, especially with poor Sojun. But once I realised the pace of this one was never going to pick up I had a little trouble maintaining my enthusiasm. The sneak peak of book two did look as if the action was finally on the horizon though.