Heart on Fire by Amanda BouchetMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars. Oh dear, what a disappointment.
The climax to the Kingmaker Chronicles trilogy was, I'm sad to say, a bit of a yawn.
Spoilers ahead for the first two books.
At the end of the second book Cat and Griffin have conquered two of the three parts of the ancient Thalyria.
Griffin and his non-magical family overthrew the magical family which previously ruled Sinta, Griffin being the Beta Sinta and his elder sister being the Alpha. In the second book Cat, Griffin and their friends gain access to the ruling family of Tarva by winning the Agon Games and, with the help of two of the minor Tarvan royals kill the Tarvan Alpha and become the King and Queen. Now the only remaining realm is that ruled by Cat's psychotic mother Alpha Fisa.
Where to start? First, I couldn't work out which of Cat and her mother was the greatest fool. Cat's mother had the advantage of being more mature, having control of her magic, and being hard-hearted yet she signally failed to kill Cat on several occasions, because just like a Bond villain she liked to toy with her victims and gloat. On the other hand, Cat frequently had her mother at her mercy and then DID NOTHING. And don't get me started on the smexy times, I mentioned it in both the previous books as being excessive and out of place but jeez, you are supposed to be building tension for the grand confrontation and we kept detouring into kissy-kissy.
The gods and goddesses interfere so much in this book, and admit they have interfered time and time again that frankly Cat and Griffin just became puppets, puppets to whom the gods gave absolutely no instructions! I know the gods and goddesses are capricious and have vision beyond the ken of humans but it just left me with the feeling that nothing Cat did (or didn't do) had any meaning. Added to which Cat seemed to go off into deep navel-gazing sessions where she realised that she was a very special snowflake indeed and I just lost interest. Even the final confrontation was a bit meh.
In retrospect I wish I had left the series at the end of the first book.
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