The Girl of Fire and Thorns
Published: September 20th 2011
Rating: ★★★/5
I had a really hard time rating this book. I couldn’t be sure if I loved or loathed it (I’m reading a lot a lot of books that are making me feel this way lately) and a day after finishing the book I changed my 4 star rating to a 3 star.
It’s not that I didn’t like the book, because I totally did! The book truly was engrossing and I found myself going out of my way to make time to read (Yeah, I actually woke up 2 hours early for work so I could squeeze in some reading time) However, as always, there were quite a few parts of the book that I disliked and that brought my overall rating down.
Here is a link to the Goodreads page if you would like to see the description for the book: [LINK]
One thing this book had going for it was the plot. There was always something going on! I guess this is why I was making such an effort to read this book, there was action packed into every page.
This book was separated into three parts, and i’ll give you a quick overview of those parts
Part one: Food
Part two: Walking
Part three: Fighting
Princess Elisa of Orovalle is one of god’s chosen. She bears a godstone in her navel, and it is her life purpose to carry out a service for god – and act of heroism pretty much. She is the youngest of two sisters, and it is made quite clear right from the beginning of the book that Elisa is pretty much useless at everything other than embroidery and eating.
Elisa likes to eat. A lot.
I found myself reaching for snacks more than once whilst reading this book. Make sure you’re not hungry when reading this!
I really struggled with Elisa’s character whilst reading this book. Pretty big part, huh. It was made abundantly obvious within the first few pages of the book that she saw herself as a fat and useless child. As if I didn’t grasp how gluttonous she was from the first chapter where she stuffed herself with pastries and scones, the ENTIRE first part of the book was food. Food. I’m fat. Food.
Also, if you’re not a fan of religion, and feel like you couldn’t stand to read 422 pages of a religion-based fantasy series, I wouldn’t recommend this book to you. This is pretty much a Christian-lit with the Christianity being substituted for a fantasy religion.
Overall, I enjoyed reading The Girl of Fire and Thorns. I really liked the plot and the pacing of the book, but I was seriously let down by the construction of the main character. I have placed the other books in this series on my TBR list, but it’s not a priority to me right now.
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