Review: Tasting Fire

Reviewed by Shelly
 

American scientist, Rae Hales is working in Central Asia to find the source and secrets of the Asian snow leopard (also known as the Pari people.) Kai Tensin, leader of the Pari people hired Rae to help with protecting them from becoming known to the public.

I think the premise is a good one for a story – there’s mystery, adventure, shape-shifters, and world travel – but the more I read, I found that I just couldn’t enjoy the tale as much as I thought I would. Actually, it’s more like I didn’t understand it. There’s a lot going on, told both in the present and in the past.

For me, it was difficult to keep up with the story line and the present thoughts versus past actions of the characters. The way the past was told really confused me, because they were intertwined with the present and there was no delineation (not even a change in text style, i.e. italicize) or telling of the past of one character to another (i.e. dialogue.) In addition to that, the story is presented in really big paragraph chunks. There’s even a whole chapter that’s delivered in one long paragraph.

The feel of the read actually came across more of a text book or manual type style than a story telling. I could probably have lived with the paragraph style but there was minimal dialogue (I’m talking maybe 5 spoken words). This a big pet peeve of mine because I like dialogue to tell me the story. I don’t want to be told what’s going, I want the characters to have a voice. There are a lot of biologic/scientific terms that are just plain ole above what I was prepared for. These different things took away so much from the story that I just wasn’t able to enjoy it.

There was some sexual content between Rae and Kai, but it was minimal and not even an "oh yes yes yes" was mentioned. Overall, I think I might have enjoyed the story more if it underwent some different editing. Here my last thing and I promise I’m done - the word blonde was used 41 times to describe Rae.

Happy Reading Folks!

Rating: C

*Book provided by author for review

Click to purchase: Amazon

Tasting Fire

by Shelly Holt

Release Date: September 10, 2012