FIRELIGHT Review -- Sophie Jordan

Firelight by Sophie Jordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Firelight is a solid four-point-five stars.

From this point on in reviewing, I'm going to start a rating system. It will contain the following:

Plot: This section will summarize how I felt about the story, what I liked and about it, including a rating.
Characters: This section will detail how interesting and original the characters are and what I think of them, including a rating.
Writing: This section will explain what I thought about the author's writing style and detail, including stressed infodump warnings, including a rating.
Organization: This section will explain how cohesive and organized I thought the plot was, including a rating.

PLOT: 5 stars
The plot of Firelight, in one word, was intense. Sophie Jordan is a very talented writer, and her style reminds me of Lili St. Crow but with shorter sentences. She uses the most languid phrases to describe the simplest things, and it's very refreshing to see that in the YA genre, as opposed to the standardized simplistic writing.
Jordan is also a master at adding tension to her stories. I found I couldn't stop reading, and when I had to, I really didn't want to. Firelight is one of those books that makes you surprised you've been reading for two hours when it doesn't feel like it at all.

CHARACTERS: 4 stars
Jacinda was supported by a wonderful cast of unique, differentiated characters, but I felt Jacinda herself was a little bland, a little "cardboard," if you will. While she did have her moments of undiluted passion, most of the time she was resenting her sudden move away from her beloved area where she'd spent the rest of her life until her dad died and she was almost caught by the Hunters, a league of people whose sole purposes are to hunt the Draki and sell their valuable skin and scales. I wasn't too impressed with her throughout the novel.

WRITING: 5 stars
Jordan's writing is gorgeous. See the PLOT section for more explanation (they were kind of interwoven).

ORGANIZATION: 4 stars
Firelight was well organized. All of Jacinda's moves made sense, and they weren't just there for advancing of the plot. They were what teenagers would do. If I wasn't such a fast reader, I'd probably have thought the plot was running a little slow in the first half, but it didn't bother me.
The arrival at the ending of the book brought on a major cliffhanger, one that was expected and in no way satisfying. This book would've been an amazing stand-alone, and the addition of the cliffhanger has me concerned about what's going to happen in the second book, other than the inevitable resolution.



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