Wildefire

by Karsten Knight

[rakesandrogues]

I originally had the intention of posting this review for I Heart Simon & Schuster month but I couldn’t find a place to squeeze this one in. After hearing about WILDEFIRE through Waiting on Wednesdays across the blogosphere, I was really excited to dive into this one. I’m a fan of mythology and I had not read any YA book so far that can compare to Percy Jackson. Though I hoped that WILDEFIRE would be fantastic, the novel’s execution failed to live up to the concept.

Ashline is an adopted Polynesian teenager who grew up on the East Coast with white Jewish parents. One of the reasons why I wanted to pick up this book was for its diversity. I loved the idea of a Polynesian main character and as I continued on reading, I found out how even more diverse the cast of characters are. I also loved Ashline’s sharp tongue as it made dialogue so much fun to read. However, one of the reasons why I couldn’t get into this book was my disconnection with Ashline. I just couldn’t relate to her character. WILDEFIRE is written in third person but I’m not going to blame the point of view for my inability to relate to her. I couldn’t find any reason to relate to her which led me unable to sympathize with her character.

The world-building fell flat for me in WILDEFIRE which is a huge disappointment. While I love the idea of reincarnation of the gods, it just was not properly executed in this book. The reasons behind why these reincarnated gods got to this boarding school were not concrete enough to hook me into believing into this world. I didn’t buy into the magic that made their powers come alive out of the page or turned the scary and mysterious monsters real.

On another note, I felt like the summary was very spoilery. I felt like I spent 3/4 of the book waiting for Ashline to realize that she is a Polynesian volcano goddess – which was really anti-climactic since I found that out from reading the summary. It would have been nice to have been as surprised as Ashline when she figured out her powers.

I was really looking forward to this one and I’m disappointed that it didn’t live up to my expectations. While the concept was great, I just couldn’t get into WILDEFIRE.