Fire & Flood

Book Title: Fire & Flood

Author: Victoria Scott

Series: Fire & Flood #1

Date Started: June 7th 2014

Date Completed: June 11th 2014

Genres: Dystopian, Romance, Adventure, Action

Rating: Two stars

Review:

I really didn't like Fire & Flood. Maybe that's just me, but there were just too many faults that hit the story too hard too many times. It was a clumsy version of too-well-known story.

Tella's brother is sick. So when a mysterious package appears on her bed with the promise of a cure, she doesn't stop to think until she's run away from home and become a Contender in the game. But before she knows it, Tella's in the middle of something she never could have imagined as she fights to win the game and leave with her life.

The writing, for me, was far too simplistic to catch my interest and didn't have any sort of depth in it. I feel like Scott just wrote down her first thoughts and never decided to develop it. This also carries on, since the continuity in the book is quite frankly ridiculous. At one point it feels like we're in a modern world, and next it's a dystopian apocalypse; sometimes Tella's aware she's fighting for her life, and the next second she can't understand why people are trying to beat her to the finish.

Furthermore, the writing just seemed three steps ahead of itself in a rather basic plot line. Tella started making assumptions with no evidence whatsoever, just so the story could keep going. It's fair enough to want a fast pace, but you can't just keep running forward when you haven't even taken the first steps.

I could rant about how Fire & Flood is a bad copy of a story we all know, but that wouldn't be constructive. Instead I'll complain about almost the same thing.

In dystopian novels (which I assume this is, though I'm not entirely sure as you'll find out) it's quite important to explain the situation the world is in. The main premise of dystopia is that it's a world that perhaps used to be our own, but is now twisted and wrecked. In this novel, there is virtually no world-building at all. We're never told what condition society is in or anything. In fact, it's implied that Tella's world is very similar to ours: she speaks in stereotypical slang a lot of the time, and has a phone; dresses the way a popular queen-bee might; and seems to have no qualms about what's happening outside of her little bubble. We even get to go out into the world and nothing is described at all. That then raises the question as to why it's being advertised to all ages that theres a race that you might die in to get a cure only lasts a few years.

The other vital flaw in the story was that there was no threat. It's important to make the reader feel tense in an action adventure like this, but the biggest danger to the characters felt like their pets having a disagreement. And, of course, the genetically engineered 'Pandoras' weren't really used for anything but being commanded around by their owners.

The characters were the lowest point of the book for me, which is a shame. Firstly, I couldn't even tell them apart - barring Tella and Guy. This is a really annoying aspect, but was actually extremely damaging to the story since this death game - where everyone seems awfully friendly and helpful - is fought by a mix of ages. Firstly, I'm convinced we weren't even told the ages of the characters to start with, so when people start talking about having older children it's a bit of a shock. But the biggest issue with this was that the characters were all written so immaturely, I couldn't tell some of them were adults. And this is very, very bad.

Generally, I find irritating protagonists bearable since they are the driving force of the story; and because of this you see the story through their eyes and somehow feel a little sorry for them when, even though they're annoying, bad things happen to them. This is not the case with Tella Holloway. From the very start I found her vain, stupid, bratty, arrogant and ignorant. She honestly shouldn't have lasted five minutes in the game, but then she did, and I was willing to let that slide - until she couldn't look after herself later and had to have her boyfriend step in and save her every three pages.

Guy a character that - whilst overused in Young Adult fiction - could've been good and had room for development. Instead he makes no progress as a person for the whole book, is only seen as the good-looking leader, and have absolutely no chemistry with Tella whatsoever.

Harper, I feel, was supposed to be important to the story. I literally didn't notice her existence out of the mush of secondary characters until the last few chapters.

This was obviously intended to be a fast paced book, but ended up tripping over itself after a short time, because it wasn't thought-through enough to start with. I did try and read the whole thing fairly, but I started to skim read half way through because I just wanted it to be over.

I honestly wouldn't recommend Fire & Flood to anyone. Usually, I'd say that my personal opinion was low, but some people might enjoy it. However, due to the overwhelming amount of YA dystopians out there with similar stories, I don't feel any particular need to sugarcoat the fact I felt it just wasn't worth reading.

Image Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18667210-fire-flood