My Rating: Wavering between 3 and 3.5 hearts
Thoughts on the Novel: After
enjoying the Mythos Academy series, I was
looking forward to reading Cold Burn of Magic, the first book in Jennifer
Estep's newest series. Cold Burn of Magic, however, was kind of not what I was
expecting.
Firstly, the pacing was very uneven (but that may have been because this is the
first book in the Black Blade series). See, Cold Burn of Magic starts off quite
excitingly with Lila stealing a necklace from a house and getting chased by
guards after she's caught, and ends on a solid, noncliffhanger note; but sort
of stalls in the middle as it introduces the reader to an urban fantasy city
where regular humans, humans with talents (i.e. superpowers), and monsters
coexist. Unfortunately, a lot of this introduction came via telling rather than
showing. For example, although there's a lot of talk about monsters, we don't really see any until the end when one conveniently appears to save Lila and Devon,
the romantic interest.
Secondly, though I liked the characters, Devon pales in comparison to Logan, the romantic interest from the Mythos Academy
series. In fact, I liked Felix, Devon's best friend, better than Devon! As well, Lila reminded me a bit of Gwen because
they both have powers that enable them to peek into other people’s minds. (Speaking
of powers, the talents that people could have in Cold Burn of Magic weren't
very well explained. For example, I still don’t understand how it’s possible
for people to steal each other’s talents.)
Comments About the Cover: It doesn’t really look very memorable.
In exchange for an honest review, this book was received from the publisher (Kensington) for free via NetGalley.
