Review: A Fire in the Sky

A Fire in the Sky by Sophie Jordan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The recent "romantasy" craze is a mixed bag, for me. The eight-hundred-pound elephant in that room is of course Rebecca Yarros, author of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame . Her 600-page bricks books combine explicit sex scenes with some fairly inventive worldbuilding, although by the time of the second book the relationship between the two leads is beginning to drag the story down (I mean, when you've read one "thrusting cock" and "wet sex" you've read them all, really).

(And who the heck decided that the silly, incongruous descriptor "sex" is a suitable synonym for the vagina and/or pubic mound, anyway? "Clit" has a much snappier ring to it, but it's not quite the portion of the female anatomy these writers are usually going for. Not to mention that in this book, unwilling virgin bride Tamsyn had no idea such an organ existed, since she apparently didn't play with herself before her marriage.)

Unfortunately, there are a lot of fantasy romances (w/dragons) following in Yarros' wake, which means you will get generally pale, less interesting imitations. Like this one. This book tends toward the shallow and frothy side, with inadequate worldbuilding and characterization. The difference in this book is that instead of bonding with a dragon, Tamsyn is one: a human/dragon shapeshifter. She didn't know this until one of her new warlord husband's warriors, disapproving of their marriage, tries to kill her, and she shifts into her dragon form and roasts him.

(This is a misstep in the worldbuilding that knocked me out of the story, by the way. Jordan's dragons are the usual winged, four-legged and serpentine-tailed type, and immediately after Tamsyn shifts she is able to fly? In a new larger body with three extra limbs that she should have no idea how to maneuver? She should be tangling up in her wings and falling out of the sky, and no, "instinct" isn't going to cut it to help her stay aloft. It should take a great deal of time and practice to be able to do anything in her dragon form, and yet there she is swooping and diving through the air, dodging other dragons and even bearing her husband on her back, as if interspecies flight is just another day in the medieval castle. And of course her husband Fell turns out to be another dragon shifter...sigh.)

This book is half the size of the Empyrean books, but in this case, less is not more. It's the first book in a series, but I'm not inclined to continue it.

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