Tuesday, May 17, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Together We Burn by Isabel Ibañez

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on May 31, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Together We Burn is the latest from Young Adult Fantasy Writer Isabel Ibañez, whose last duology was the Bolivian-culture inspired Woven in Moonlight/Written in Starlight.  Both books in that duology dealt with pretty predictable and well-trodden themes, but the culture showed was interesting and the second book dealt with those themes in some pretty surprising ways, with its protagonist being antagonistic to start and realizing her wrong and the horrors of the cycles of oppression in the less obvious way.  So I was definitely curious in trying this next work, which trades the Bolivian inspiration for a Spanish one, taking the bullfighting culture and replacing it with dragon-fighting instead.  

And Together We Burn is fine - a perfectly solidly executed YA fantasy featuring a girl desperate to save her family and its name in a dragon-fighting/dancing business, while also trying to deal with a potential romance and a conspiracy to take her family down.  At the same time, it's also incredibly generic and predictable - the mystery antagonist turns out to be the obvious one any reader will have seen a million times, the romance isn't anything special, and the resolution of things comes in a way you'll likely expect as well.  There's something that's often comforting in predictability or doing the same thing over and over in many novels, but you usually need something stand out in character or setting or something to accompany that predictability, and that's not here, leaving a very solid but not special book here.  

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
Zarela Zalvidar's mother was a legendary Flamenco dancer, known for performing prior to her father, a legendary Dragonador (Dragon-Fighter), fought a dragon in the arena.  After she died in a dragon accident, Zarela has tried to make her proud by continuing her legacy...even though the fans would prefer to see Zarela dance like her mother than show off who she herself is.  

But one day something does wrong, and her family's dragons get loose, her father badly injured, and she finds herself and her family with such debts that they are in danger of losing everything - their name and their fortune, as well as their lives.  With everything at stake, Zarela decides that she has one choice: to put on a show the people have never seen before, with herself as the first female Dragonador, to raise the money she needs.  But with her father injured, the only person who can train her is the stubborn, rude, and talented Arturo Diaz de Montserrat - a handsome young man who has sworn off dragon fighting in favor of a dream of saving dragons and giving them a place on his own. 

Arturo is infuriating....and intriguing, and he might just help her save her name....if she can convince him it's worth it.  But her family's bad fortune turns out to have been foul play, and she might also have to deal with the possibility that someone else will take steps to ensure that she doesn't succeed at turning it around...by any means necessary...
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Together We Burn takes place in a clearly Spanish inspired world - a world where Flamenco dancing is a prestigious art, and where fighting a beast with a red cloth in front of fans is an artform....except it isn't bullfighting, it's dragon fighting. Spanish words and dialogue are peppered throughout, but rarely more than in single phrases and sentences at a time (and never in anything beyond an elementary level so I could understand everything), so even if you don't speak Spanish, you'll have no problem understanding and it does make the world feel more like its inspiration.  

At the same time, it doesn't really do anything that interesting with that inspiration, with the extent of its Spanishness being "there's Spanish, Bullfighting with Dragons, and Dancing, so that's Spain for you!".  And the substitution of dragons for bulls is kind of wasted too, with the book occasionally noting the different type of dragons, but other than one type of dragon being the rare type that killed Zarela's mother, there really isn't anything special or magical about the dragons to make them special or make it feel like they almost couldn't be bulls and the story would barely change.  Other than them flying and being dangerous with fire, there really isn't anything about the dragons that inspires wonder or fear, which really feels like a waste and makes the story kind of feel meh.

The same is true of the characters and the rest of the plot.  Zarela is a perfectly fine heroine - stubborn and determined to save her family name, not to just sell herself off in marriage, even if that means confronting a fear of dragons she has had deep inside.  When she finds something she thinks she needs - like Arturo's help - she's determined to get it no matter what, and honestly the best part of the book is the ridiculous lengths to which Zarela goes to get him to leave his job caring for dragons to come work for her.  But she's not any type of heroine you won't have seen before.  Similarly her chemistry with her best friend and worker Lola is rather adorable, even if the book's attempts to make Lola's mysterious secret outings with the magic guild apprentice friend she fancies don't really work.  

But the other characters never feel like more than perfunctory or means to an end, whether that be the potentially jealous Dragon Guild master or the protestors against Dragon Fighting, none of whom get any depth even when there might be one.  Even love interest Arturo is very generic, with his conflict over helping Zarela despite hating dragon fighting just kind of glazed over in the end when things take a predictable turn to avoid any conflict there in favor of other conflict.  And the plot's mystery, about who is behind trying to ruin Zarela's family business and name,, is well super obvious such that you'll see it coming a mile away since there's a lack of suspects who get any development at all....and even the real antagonist doesn't get enough page time for his villainy to make really any impact.  

Again, none of this is bad.  Together We Burn's plot is perfectly functional, if unexceptional, its characters are fine, and the setting is done just well enough to work, even if not to stand out.  The romance is similarly functional, with it not being particularly hot even in its sex scene and prior romantic scene, but working well.  This is not a YA fantasy book anyone is going to read and probably strongly dislike.  But there isn't really anything here to love either.  

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