Author: Daisy Whitney
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!
P157 "...google-eyed stare..."? Seriously? It's either 'googly-eyed', or 'goggle-eyed'. Google it!
I had to really rush this because I suddenly had an unexpected deadline imposed on me of three days - this was very shortly after I'd selected it. Usually the deadline is fifty days or so. Keep that in mind! Fortunately this turned out to be a DNF, so I was able to get it done.
Also keep in mind that this is a first person PoV novel which I detest. Very few authors can write them well, and even when they're written well, it's still always all ME! All the time - self centered, self-obsessed, which can be irritating to no end. Since 1PoV is so extraordinarily limiting, why authors insist upon writing these unlikely 'diaries' which all-too-often end up more like diarrhea is a mystery. Unfortunately, with ebooks, there's no ready way to take it off the shelf and flip through the first few pages for a quick skim read to see if you might like it before you take it on. You get it sight unseen.
For some reason, when I first began actually reading this, I was thinking that I was reading about a guy, so it became a little confusing until I realized that the main character is a girl. Normally I would have been thrilled by this, but in this case I was just annoyed. It's my fault for not paying attention to the blurb I guess, but I read the blurb some time ago - and we know blurbs always lie, right?! Anyway, once that was sorted, I started getting into it, but I think if it had been about a guy it would have made a better novel!
Aria is what's known in this alternative world as an elemental artist - that is, she's someone who can create one of the four supposed 'elements', in her case: fire. A few people have unaccountably developed these skills employing the four trope "elements": earth, fire, water, and wind - not that any one of those actually is an element.
There's no explanation offered as to how this happened, except for the trope "magic gene" which is mentioned and which is far more of an excuse than ever it is an explanation. Genes rarely do anything by themselves, and there's no way one gene could account for four unnatural and diverse traits, so this was the first problem I had with this. If you're going to attempt an explanation, at least make it sound like one. This idea of controlling the elements in this way came right out of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera hexalogy (where it was better done) - or any number of fantasy stories - except that this is a contemporary novel.
Aria can spew fire from her fingers (not form her eyes as this idiot cover illustrates!), and handle hot stuff without being burned. Nothing unusual about those traits in a woman...! The problem is that Aria isn't a natural supernatural. Her power comes from some deal she made with a vudu woman in the swamps. She has to get her power recharged periodically by having her friend Elise (a wind elemental) draw down a lightning bolt into Aria's heart. This will knock her out and leave her overflowing with fire, which will then need to be bled off into water to dial Aria down from eleven to the usual ten. Why lightning, which isn't remotely like fire, can recharge her fire is yet another thing which is unexplained, so I'm already in trouble here in the first few chapters! I don't even know why she has to pay this 'price'.
While these powers can be used to help society, such as reducing the power of hurricanes, or calling down rain to douse a brush fire for example, it seems that most elementals choose to put their powers to trivial use: for entertainment. This I didn't buy because, seriously, how many times would people want to go and see someone shoot fire out of their hands? Once would be plenty for me! Yet in this novel there's supposedly a league! The "teams" compete, but how the judgment is made as to who wins is never explained.
These powers - again for no apparent reason - desert people in their twenties, and they don't arrive until puberty, (again, no explanation for these arbitrary dates) so an artist maybe has ten years of glory. Far from wanting to be of public service, Aria is selfish enough to want to 'go Hollywood', and be a big time entertainer. The only way she can achieve this realistically (I use that term loosely) is to make a deal with a Djin, known as a 'granter'. Where the heck that came from I have no idea, but that's the deal, and it's the deal she makes.
The genii is of course her love interest, but this is where the story became too juvenile, too clichéd, and far too boring for me. Suddenly her power had nothing to do with the story and it was all about adolescent love, while the fiction was maintained that she was still all about "the league", like there was nothing else in life other than showing off in front of a crowd - no social benefit, no dedication to service, no other job! You can't work in an office or on a building site, or in a convenience store, or driving a cab. It's the "leagues" or you're no one with nothing, and all Aria is interested in is herself. I really could not stand her.
There's no explanation offered as to why it's 'illegal' to fake your power in the leagues, or why there's such a concern over 'stealing' your power, as Aria has been doing. Neither are we told how this has the force of law behind it - that you go to jail for stealing powers?! Jeez why not simply arrest everyone for breathing - aren't they stealing oxygen from nature?!
It's not like the lightning was owned by some poor impoverished family, and she stole it from them and they died from the loss! For goodness sakes, it's lighting. It's free! Who cares? Not me. This story made no freaking sense whatsoever. It's like these arbitrary rules were put in place to shore-up the creaking, hole-ridden plot, but they had no foundation themselves, so they really held up nothing. They merely shone a spotlight on the fact that this tent had no poles to prop it up - all that held it up was fresh air.
Ooh! Maybe it was Elise, Aria's friend, who was still propping Aria up, along with this tent?! The funny thing is that Elise (Aria's BFF who aids and abets Aria's thievery) disappeared from the story and was never heard from again - although I confess I was lightly skimming most of the latter half of the novel so maybe I missed her. OTOH, I really didn't miss her. She was kinda creepy.
At one point (p155) we're told that if someone is caught stealing their powers, then their entire family is banned from the league, yet when Aria's brother is caught doing exactly that, and imprisoned(!), no one seems to come after her for the longest time, and then it's for her own dishonesty, not for what her bro did!
And don't even ask me about Hannibal Gator. I can't recommend this novel. It has no fire.
