Fire Study (The Chronicles of Ixia, #3) (Study, #3)

by Maria V Snyder

[ladygrey]

I really wanted to give this one three stars, because I like [a:Maria V. Snyder|445303|Maria V. Snyder|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1224476079p2/445303.jpg] and I feel bad being disappointed in one of her books. But this is just so exposition heavy in the first two-thirds that it was almost painful. And it wasn't just massive amounts of expositions to explain this book, or to recount the first two books, it was repeatede exposition. Like, "my friends Ari and Janco" - "Ari and Janco, my friends from Ixia" - "Janco taught me to fight because he's my friend, him and Ari." It wasn't that pedantic but it was the same information over and over again as if we hadn't heard it the first time or frikkin read the first two books.

It did get better in the last third of the book when things finally started happening. But when there's a glaring discontent in a book it makes all the other flaws so much easier to see and be annoyed with.

Like how Yelena is insanely, ridiculously, annoyingly stupid. She's never really bothered me but in this book there were moments I wanted to strangle her.

Or the isolation. I have not met a book yet where I enjoyed extensive periods of someone being isolated from other characters and so all we had to read were their thoughts for pages and pages. Isolated characters are not ever fun. You know what's fun? Yelena and Valek taunting danger and taking risks because they're awesome. Also? Ari and Janco doing pretty much anything, but mostly being a step faster than the bad guys and surprised by how awesome Valek is and teasing Yelena. Even Leif and Irys are fun. But Yelena all by herself with her thoughts and fears and bad decisions? Not fun.

And that, I think was the biggest disappointment. Because the other books were fun, even though they were sometimes dark and full of danger and hard to read. The characters were engaging and the world was interesting. And this was all repetitive exposition and Yelena by herself and cliches of what the other characters bring to the story (she argues with Leif, she fights with Ari and Janco, she sleeps with Valek - the end).