Breath of Fire (The Kingmaker Chronicles, #2)

by Amanda Bouchet

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

Okay, where to start with this book… I’ll start with the fact that I started this series hesitantly. Book one has RAVE reviews. I was very worried that I was going to into it with my hopes too high and would be disappointed. That didn’t have happen. I listened to A Promise of Fire and really enjoyed it. So, I never questioned requesting Breath of Fire. Then I started seeing some reviews for it. They weren’t nearly as good, mostly mixed. Some people loved it. Others didn’t. That made me not really want to tackle this book, but I requested for review, so I need to at least attempt it. That is the problem with reviewing audiobooks, you’re one of the last people reviewing the books, so you see how everyone else feels about book before you can jump in. Even if I don’t read reviews for fear of spoilers, I do see ratings. That can color my opinion before even starting the book.

So this book has a bit of a rocky start. There’s a huge fight between Cat and Griffin. Cat had lied by omission (who can blame her, she was trying to protect others from her family). Griffin goes off the rails and destroys everything in the room and is even physical with Cat. So she thinks things are over between them (and wouldn’t you??), she cloaks herself and goes to hide in shame. She berates herself, a lot. She also panics be she’s magically tied to Griffin and can’t leave him because of her vow. He is not under the same compulsion. She’s very concerned she will have to watch him move on to another woman while she can’t leave or move on herself. When Griffin finally finds her, they have a big reunion and a ton of makeup sex.

The story does get better as the Beta Team goes on a quest to get help to fight Cat’s mother in the Ice Plains. A lot happens and I won’t go into details to avoid spoilers. Then there is how they decide to go into these games to make it into castle Tarva. These games are life and death. Again, a lot happens, but no details to avoid spoilers again.

Now, that is an extreme summary of the story. A lot happens throughout the entire story. There is a ton of action and fight scenes, many of which are life and death. We also learn a lot about Cat and the prophecy surrounding her. We continue to learn more about this world and the wonderful Greek characters in this world.

I have a few issues with this story besides the rocky start. One, the team puts themselves in some pretty tricky situations. Yet they make it out with little issues. Don’t get me wrong, their fights aren’t a walk in the park. But when you think about this team of mostly humans taking on magical beings, including giant cyclops and other magical humans, they come out better than I think they should. There is loss of life, but that loss, at least to me, came at times when things weren’t nearly as dire as times when they should’ve been slaughtered. It just didn’t have much of a realistic feel to me.

All of this being said, I still think this series intrigues me. I’m very interested to see how the series will wrap up. I am glad to know that I’m going into the last book knowing that I will have the complete series under my belt. If I didn’t know how many more books in the series, I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to keep tackling these books with an unknown ending.

Narration
4 stars
Again I love Mia Barrow’s narration of this book. I think she helped keep me going when there were parts of the books that weren’t my favorite. I love the voices that she uses for all the characters. I think they fit the characters’ personalities to a tee. She is also good about setting the tone be it a fight scene, sex scene or a scene where everyone is down because of the events in the story.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.