Review: Blood and Flame by Brendan Corbett

Disclaimer: I received an advanced reader copy of this book through BookSirens and this review is my own opinion.

Originality is not a dealbreaker for me. After all, the field of fiction is abundant with retreaded ground. No one is going to be 100% new 100% of the time. But if you're not going for novelty, something else needs to take its place. This could be great prose, compelling characters or just a generally good time. Blood and Flame by Brendan Corbett unfortunately misses the mark.

It's a fairly standard fantasy adventure that follows two mages, Wynne and Dara as they are sent on a quest to investigate a rumoured source of mana. From the get-go, the characters are cookie cutter. Wynne comes from nobility and Dara comes from a common background. This serves as a source of tension, but this doesn't last and it serves to highlight the core issue with this novel. Everything is surface level. Blood and Flame fails to take things further or explore anything deep. There's tension between the humans and the fae, and suggestions that not everything the humans know to be true is actually accurate, but even these themes don't get a lot of attention outside of jibes by the characters. The vast majority of worldbuilding is done through dialogue and all of the characters blend together. There is some attempt to make the fae character Ami cheeky, but more often than not this comes across as mean-spirited.

The magic system has its perks and had the potential for being great, but as with most things in this novel, its implications are largely left unexplored.

With a defter hand and a better application of voice, Blood and Flame could have been a decent fantasy adventure, but the execution is lackluster and it doesn't quite meet the mark.

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