Monday, October 6, 2014

Book Review: True Fire by Gary Meehan

True Fire (True Fire #1)
Author:  Gary Meehan
Publisher:  Quercus, 400 pages
Publication Date:  November 4, 2014
*Received ARC from publisher via Edelweiss

From Goodreads:
Sixteen-year-old Megan is pregnant.

As she prepares to tell her family, the unthinkable happens. Her village is razed by soldiers: her grandfather murdered, her twin sister taken.

On a desperate mission to rescue her beloved Gwyneth, Megan discovers a terrifying truth - that the destruction of her old life is inextricably linked to her unborn child. The feared witch soldiers, vanquished a generation ago, have returned to see the fulfilment of a prophecy: one that will put Megan and her new friends - Eleanor, a fiery ex-aristocrat, and Damon, a wayward charmer - at the heart of the greatest war her world has ever known.


Review:
What I liked about this book is that it's different, it doesn't follow the typical YA pattern.  The main character is Megan, a sixteen year old pregnant girl who meets the guy who got her pregnant one night and watches as his head is chopped off and her whole entire village is killed by witches. So yeah, right away this is different. She then journeys to find her twin sister who she thinks was kidnapped rather than killed by the witches and she's joined on this journey by Eleanor, a forty something woman and Damon, a twenty something guy. Again, different companions than the usual YA.  Another difference is that there is absolutely no romance in this book.  At all. And when I thought there might be romance  between two of the characters, I thought it would be between Damon and Eleanor.  Again, totally different.  Megan and Eleanor are both strong female protagonists and a tentative friendship develops between them.  Damon is funny with witty one-liners that provide some humor in this otherwise fairly dark book.

There's plenty of action, unexpected twists and turns, and betrayal after betrayal. Absolutely no one can be trusted.  And I mean no one.  Definitely a lot of moral ambiguity.  The whole history of the war between the witches and the priests was fascinating and both sides are horrible so it was a little hard to know who to root for, which made it interesting.  Overall, very enjoyable read.


Posted by:  Pam

4 comments:

  1. I have this to review as well. I actually feel pretty excited about it now. Great review!

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  2. I did see this while perusing EW and was intrigued by the summary. I like that it isn't your average YA and it's usually fun/tense when you don't know who you can trust! I think I will keep this on my radar. Glad you enjoyed it!

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  3. I've had this book for months now, so I really need to hurry up and make an effort to actually get to it. I've seen mostly positive reviews so that gives me a lot of hope that it's a book I will love.

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  4. This sounds so good!! And I know how much you love romance so if you enjoyed it even w/o that then I know it's going to be a great book. I can't wait to get my hands on it and read it!

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