Review: Bring the Heat

Bring the Heat by G.A. Aiken
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

This book brings to a climax the arc of the Zealots and the god Chramnesind as Queen Annwyl the Bloody and the dragons of Garbhan Isle together with Queen Rhiannon and all the characters we have met in the past eight books draw together for the final conflict. This is an epic book, don't even try to read it if you haven't read the previous books, all our old favourites are back to do battle. Annwyl gets dragged into a well and disappears. Dagmar Reinholdt and her cohorts are plotting, the Cadwaladrs are their usual blood-thirsty selves and we see the Mi-runach and the Daughters of the Steppes. G.A. Aiken brings all of these fantastic characters to life so vividly and weaves the strands of their stories together in the tradition of some of the great fantasy novelists of my childhood.

At the personal level, Captain Branwen the Awful and her best friend Aidan the Divine have been fighting side by side against the Zealots. After Chramnesind's priests level the mountains as far as the eye can see, Aidan, Brannie and two of Aidan's Mi-runach brothers Caswyn and Uther drag themselves from the rubble and flee the approaching Zealot army, only to run into Rhiannon's youngest daughter Keita the Viper. The foursome are ordered to protect Keita as she undertakes a dangerous mission.

To do all of the different threads true justice this book needed to be twice as long (I wouldn't have minded). There was just so much going on that the romance between Branwen and Aidan didn't really take off for me. There didn't seem to be any great love between them, just two best friends who kind of slipped into love by accident. I also thought that, and probably intentionally, this book wasn't as laugh out loud funny as some of the others. Sure, Keita, Uther and Caswyn provided some light relief, and the Daughters of the Steppes are always good value, but overall this was a more sombre book as befits the climax of a story arc about a vicious cult.

I really liked this but I didn't love it. Branwen and Aidan just weren't strong enough characters in my opinion, Keita really stole the show from them even though it wasn't her book. But it was a strong fitting end to the Zealots, although it looks like there might be more trouble on the horizon ...

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Bumped for release

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