The Fires of Vengeance (The Burning, #2)

by Evan Winter

[cornerfolds]

Earlier this month I finally picked up The Rage of Dragons and was utterly blown away by every aspect of the book. I was SO excited to get my hands on a copy of the ARC for The Fires of Vengeance that I dove in straight away and was unable to put yet another book in this series down.

The Fires of Vengeance picks up directly after the end of The Rage of Dragons, with Tau beginning his duties as Queen's Champion. Like in Rage, the action begins immediately and continues at a breakneck pace, which I absolutely loved. Tau's revenge is still a central focus of this book, but this time there is much more at play. There are threats to Tau and his Queen from all sides and he grows so much as a character as he takes up her cause as his own. 

In addition to Tau's continued character growth, I adored the side characters. Evan Winter does an incredible job making me care for everyone in this book, even making me fell sympathy for the bad guys. I loved, LOVED the relationship between Tau and Queen Tsiora as they learned to (awkwardly) navigate each other in their new roles. Oh, and if anything happens to Hadith and Uduak we riot.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this second book in this series is that it explores the mythology of the world even more. We learn more about the Cull, the Goddess, and much more about the demon world that Tau takes so much advantage of. There are more politics and more cultures explored, but I never felt lost or in over my head. 

Every time I pick up a second book, I'm terrified that it will suffer from the dreaded middle book syndrome (see: most YA fantasy second books), but this absolutely did not. Nothing felt like filler or overly drawn out. Everything that happened advanced the plot and the characters and I wasn't bored for a single second.

My only issue is that The Fires of Vengeance ended as soon as it did! I would have read another 500 pages of this without complaint. The worst part of reading an ARC is having to wait even longer for the next book in the series to be published. I definitely see myself doing a re-read of these during that time. This series is definitely on my favorites shelf!