The Burning Sky

The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas

I'm legitimately disappointed that I couldn't finish this book.

Disclaimer: I attempted to read the advanced reader's copy of this book. It will be released on September 17, 2013.

An amazon summary before I 'dig in', "Just before the start of Summer Half, in April 1883, a very minor event took place at Eton College, that venerable and illustrious English public school for boys. A sixteen-year-old pupil named Archer Fairfax returned from a three-month absence, caused by a fractured femur, to resume his education.

Almost every word in the preceding sentence is false. Archer Fairfax had not suffered a broken limb. He had never before set foot in Eton.
His name was not Archer Fairfax. And he was not, in fact, even a he.

This is the story of a girl who fooled a thousand boys, a boy who fooled an entire country, a partnership that would change the fate of realms, and a power to challenge the greatest tyrant the world had ever known.

Expect magic." AMAZON LINK OF ....WHAT

The premise of this book was a little rocky as the world building seemed really faulty and I wasn't entirely sure where anything was or where anything was going. There also seemed to be an innate ability to 'port' or 'vault' to places, I'm not entirely sure if there's a difference between the two.

There's a lot of magic everywhere. All the time. Magic. Elemental mages, magical items, magic magic magic.

THERE'S A WHOLE LOT OF MAGIC.

That is all fine and dandy.

I was willing to work through the murky details as the narration switched between an elemental mage and the kind-of prince of the realm.

I drew the line when the two narrators saw each other and were like WHOA I THINK I LOVE THEM, WAIT THAT'S UNREASONABLE, BUT I'M GOING TO NOTICE EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY, IS THIS LOVE?

...there are a handful of moments where they even think things like, "Well normally I'm not nearly as attracted to a person as I am to them. I shouldn't get starry eyed though." Nope nope nope.

I think the amazon summary is a sufficient summary since I didn't get any farther in the book than page 132 out of 448 pages. Again, I got my hands on the advanced reader's copy, so it might be different when the book hits the shelves in stores.

I will say that the premise I got through was pretty interesting, and I liked the female main character (elemental mage) as she was feisty yet responsible. But then the male character (kind-of prince) was all suppressed emotions, careful calculations, frightfully resourceful, and resigned to fate/destiny/prophecy, I just kind of got 'meh' about the whole situation.

I mean, the elemental mage (female narrator who has a ridiculously complicated name to spell, so I'm not attempting it) had a guardian in the legal sense, then it turned into the actual guarding sense, and then she was whisked away by a magical trunk after she summoned lightning. Sounds fantastic right?

Enter prince and the female meeting and I just rolled my eyes at the pages so many times I wasn't sure what I was reading.

Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for a magical and emotionally magical romance novel of sorts.

It sounded cool as a premise, but I wanted to see the world that the romance was going to stumble around in and concentration on the political strife, etc; it seemed like all it wanted to do was love though.

Boring.

...but I only got to page 132 before calling it quits. Maybe it got better? Maybe it got worse? I don't know.

I'm not going to stick around to find out either.

Happy reading!