Fireborn by Rosaria Munda

Summary of Fireborn:

Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone–even the lowborn–a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders.

Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn’t be more different. Annie’s lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee’s aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the same orphanage forged their friendship, and seven years of training have made them rivals for the top position in the dragonriding fleet.

But everything changes when survivors from the old regime surface, bent on reclaiming the city.

With war on the horizon and his relationship with Annie changing fast, Lee must choose to kill the only family he has left or to betray everything he’s come to believe in. And Annie must decide whether to protect the boy she loves . . . or step up to be the champion her city needs.

Length:

448 Pages

Reading Speed:

6 hours and 55 minutes

My Opinion of Fireborn:

Look, I would normally never do this.

I have not finished this book but I’m going to review it anyway.

Side Characters:

I’ll start with the one things that bothered me at first glance.

They has stupid names.

Not the main characters, but I mean…

Calling one of them Power? And Duck?

Why would you do that. You can write a name that means power in another language, but not Power. Seriously?

Second thing that bothered me,

No individual lives. All side characters stand in awe and wonderment of Lee (The Main Character) and his amazing dragon riding skills. Give me a break.

They all fight for this sort of honor of becoming a commanding dragon rider but it is somehow already assumed that they will lose. They don’t train harder to beat Lee or to even give him a challenge. They don’t have their individual lives outside of the main character. One is his best friend, the other has a crush on him, and the third is his nemesis.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t stand around the smartest kid in school and hope he notices me.

Female Main Characters:

Calling them characters is an overstatement. They each had one character trait and that is it.

Let’s start with Annie.

Annie who is somehow described as someone with a hard shell and super tough and doesn’t care what people think.

At least Lee describes her as that. When in reality, she crumbles about every little thing. The only thing that I was impressed with her about is that she burned herself to win a tournament.

Here is what I would have done with this character:

Give her some believes. Things she will absolutely not budge about Have them be political and have them be against Lee’s believes. She would never lie for him, never defend him when it comes to this.

Give her a temper. With all that is escribed of what happens in her past, this girl is way too fragile. As a kids he was described to defend herself and go against people older and bigger than her. As a teenager she lost that.

Give her a hidden motive. She wants to be a dragon rider, she wants to win the tournament. Why?

All I know is her hanging onto Lee’s every word and gesture is lazy character writing.

Male Main Character:

Ugh.

I mean really, ugh.

The entitlement on this boy. Man, he reminds me of my brother when he was a 5 year old Ipad kid. The kind that turns the volume up on a game in a restaurant. That’s Lee.

They made a system where they evaluate people based on skills and give them jobs in that direction. Some jobs are better than others, but that will always be the case.

Whereas Lee comes from the whole, my dad was the leader so I should be the leader too. No qualification, no nothing.

Maybe the author is working on Lee’s development. Maybe the objective was that Lee had this entitled view and changes it throughout the books. This is a triology after all.

What irks me though, is that they gave it no question on who the bad guy is, and who the good guys are.

This is a little spoiler, but I need to get my point across.

Annie tells Lee that his father personally made her watch as he burned her family alive. That is no coming back after that. There is no, maybe there was another explanation.

Annie is Lee’s best friend and hinted to be more in the future (zero chemistry and unoriginal, but let’s move on). Well into his teens later, and it’s like he doesn’t care about what his father has done? I hate characters without a morale backbone so that is horrible.

Plot/Writing Style:

I’ve been trying to read this book for three weeks. I dread sitting down and opening it cause it is just so boring.

There is no plot. There is barely a plot. Even if there was a plot, it’s being overshadowed by unnecessary jumbo throughout the book that you don’t even care what the plot is about.

And don’t even get me talking about the writing style. Because again:

UGH.

It could be because I hated the characters so much, but I did not care about their personal lives. Not when nothing interesting happens anyway.

Side Note:

How can a book about dragons be so boring? How can the dragons be so unimportant? They have no personalities, barely any powers, they are the size of horses????

Just no.

Recommendation for Fireborn:

Do I have to bother with this?

No.