Image from the internet.
My last book review was a rather lengthy one – at least for me. This promises to be exceptionally short. Every so often I get lucky and a book on my wish list becomes free! Always exciting. Without much thought about what book I was “purchasing” I loaded up my new digital read.
That is not entirely true, I vaguely remembered something about a Regency-like period and a new mage discovering she had the ability to burn things. What I didn’t pay attention to was the author’s name. Thus, I was expecting more of a trashy romance when I started to read: Burning Bright by Melissa McShane.
While there is romance, sort of, in the background of Melissa McShane’s books, they are not what I would describe as trashy. They are not really all that focused on the romance either. Actually, the author is pretty good about establishing a friendship between the two love-interests before anything so scandalous as a kiss happens.
The story centres around Elinor, who wakes one day to discover that she is an Extraordinary Scorcher after nearly setting her entire house on fire. Not wanting to remain in the same residence of her father and not willing to submit to his choice in husband, Elinor offers her talents (as a fire-starter and stopper) to the navy. They are busy with wars and pirates, something Elinor feels she can assist with.
I will say this. Elinor does not dress as a boy to hide on the ship. That would have been silly. Instead she is kept as segregated as possible from the rest of the crew spending much of her time in the Captain’s quarters. It was a surprisingly reasonable set up.
Image from the internet.
Further, the story revolves around Elinor’s adventures helping to root out the pirate problem in the Caribbean. Her Captain love-interest was a reasonably developed character, a little too shiny but otherwise fine. Over all, it is a solid, clean read.
As for my problems with the book. First, Elinor’s tyrannical father was not well-developed. He was Evil! It was clearly done as motivation for Elinor, but left me with a completely unrealistic feeling. My second nit-pick is the pacing. It was a bit slow. Finally, the magic system which was crucial to the plot was not clearly defined nor did it feel integrated into the world. I think the biggest irksome moment was when we are introduced to the skills of a Bounder half way through the story. I didn’t even realize that one of the sailors had this skill. It felt rather tacked on as the author realized she needed scenes to happen in more than one location.
I would give it a solid, generic good rating. Nothing overly offensive (the father can be shoved to the side), nothing overly fantastic (magic system was okay).