We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Blog header credit: ventureswithbooks | IG
MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE BOOK:
This was read in one sitting, and boy… I hated it. I did not like the writing style; I felt the two main characters were bland; and every single freaking sentence drops in foreign words and they are usually unnecessary (like when Zafira counted to three; or when they interchanged their translation of ‘coffee’). One thing that was pleasurable, was the middle when they are in the strange new world. It felt like a Greek tragedy where somebody gets shipwrecked by the gods.
CHARACTERS/DYNAMICS:
Zafira: she’s our Huntress. She’s pretty blah. She’s more talk than action, and doesn’t really speak her mind until later at the end. To me, she wasn’t a badass and I didn’t think she fulfilled the “I’m a woman hiding behind the guise of a male warrior” very well.
Nasir: He’s our dark, handsome prince. He’s also really boring. He’s like a sulky Dorian from ToG. SWIPE NEXT FOR A CUTER, MORE INTERESTING YET TROUBLED PRINCE 😒
PLOT:
I’ll let you know once I finally complete looking up every non-English word that was dropped into the story. Basically it’s like Wicked Saints but makes 0 sense, even to the characters themselves.
STRUCTURE:
The story is narrated in third person, and there are three acts.
THEMES:
– all I got from it was that they drink coffee, like all ancient Arab retellings like to remind us ;P
– pretty boys will always break your heart
– girls who have the special Chosen One syndrome usually are very blasé and need the help and interest of many other characters to remain slightly tolerable
QUOTES:
Okay so here’s the thing. I feel the author is AMAZING at writing cryptic, quotable lines. But they usually were at the beginning or ending of each chapter, AND THAT DID NOT MAKE UP FOR THE CRAPPY CHARACTER AND PLOT DEVELOPMENT.
THE ENDING:
Surprise, surprise it was (view spoiler) all along who was working for the Lion/Shadow. (I actually didn’t foresee it as (view spoiler) but I figured it would be one of the main five characters mentioned).
IMPACT:
I will NOT be reading the next book, or continuing the series. I RECOMMEND PEOPLE TO CONSUME THIS BOOK VIA AUDIOBOOK, as I think it’ll be easier to not get hung up on all the non-English terms just sprinkled across every dang page.
Cal's Reading Corner 
Well, at least you were able to read the whole thing in one sitting… the power of focused hate-reading? I’ve never heard anything about this book but yeah, boring characters are the worst. I’ll take a protagonist who’s a stark raving psychopath over one who puts me to sleep any day. 😛
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Oh hey– most people have thoroughly enjoyed this book. I didn’t see people rave about the characters, so it must be the storyline and action that people raved on about. Give it a go if it interests you!
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