Raye Wagner

Thank you to Raye Wagner and Rita Stradling for the personal invitation to review a pre-reader advanced copy of Magic of Fire and Shadows (Curse of the Ctyri, Book 1) for an honest review.

First and foremost, what I have to start out by saying I love about this world is broken down into two parts: world building and mythic background.

One — I love, love, love that this world feels so teemingly big, and spread out. I love that we haven't been force-fed pages of background or a million show more details, but instead, our understanding of these worlds, these kingdoms, these people, is given to us piece by piece from one of our two pod characters. It shows a trust in the readers to let them put things together, and it leaves a lot of room for other stories to be told in this world.

Two — I love the abundant use of mythology, mythic character, fairy tales, and legends from any number of backgrounds across our own world and stories. I loved seeing how things were taken and twined together in both the foreground and what was happening with the characters, in the background, for bein, even more, pieced together in subtle story pieces.

I am a fan in writing of both the singular point of view and of the multiples, think the normal YA book and then a comparison with books such as Game of Thrones and The Expanse, but I always hinge on one important thing where it blurs into the many — it has to serve a point in the story, and this story absolutely does!

Because of our two POV vantage point we get to see both societies, how they feel about each other, why they are interacting with each other the way they are, and how every dominoes in each other place, which gives us a very intriguing and in-depth viewpoint from an insider and outside, in every parts. Even more so, we’re championed by both sides of view to embrace and support both of our main characters in their own kinds of strength, faith, bravery, and embracing or battling their own feelings, choices, and even mistakes.

There’s a little bit here for everyone: magic, mystery, intrigue, danger, despair, evil machinations, startling hope, daring bravery, and a touch of slow burn romance. I will definitely be getting a copy for my classroom and recommending it out to our librarian, and students after it’s published.

(As a tiny aside for those who need to know, there is a cliffhanger, but it’s definitely worth it and it will leave you longing for the next book to start right now!) show less

I loved both of these books so far in this series. There is Demigods and Monsters and The Curse of the Sphinx. Any teenager who has a love of Percy Jackson will fall in love with these books. There is the paranormal element, mythology, and the mission. For the girls, you also have some romance, but it is well balanced so it is not so much the boys won’t enjoy the book. It is well written and the story is solid. I can’t wait for the third book to come out so I can find out what is show more happening after she overhears a conversation she isn’t supposed to. I guess that is what you get for eavesdropping though. Also, I am curious who will turn out to be more trustworthy? Will it be Athan, whom she has a history with but may have his own motives? Or will it be Xan, who proves so far to be a loyal friend, but also may have his own motives? I also want to know if she will finally be the one to break Apollo’s curse, which has struck her family for generations now. I hope you come to love these books as much as I do. show less

I really enjoyed this book! It's the classic tale of good vs evil with angels, demons & Lilith! The world building is rich & vivid & absolutely fantastic! The characters are also great but Sanaa's character is the one that stands out the most for me! She has had a rough life but she is strong & the author really did a beautiful job developing! Overall lush world building characters to fall in love with & a swoon worthy romance!

I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. to finish this book because it was so captivating.

Though she lives in a kingdom controlled by a sadistic king who has caused the land to become infertile by killing off all the healers called Phaetyns, Ryn is an optimist and wants adventure in her life. She didn't realize what she was asking for because her life soon became a nightmare.

Her boss, who is like family, holds rebel meetings at the tavern where she works. Ryn isn't part of it but she likes to eavesdrop show more whenever possible. She, like everyone else, wants to overthrow the king and his powerful Drae who hunts traitors from the sky.

Lord Irrik is a dragon shifter called a Drae who is the Boogeyman of the children's tales. Everyone fears him because of the stories and rumors, some true and some not. He is bound to the king by a blood oath so he carries out every monstrous order the king commands him to do. He has no choice.

Ryn meets Lord Irrik one night when she's trying to make it home before curfew. From there, things just went terribly wrong. She ended up being taken to the king where everyone knows that once you go in to the palace, you never come out again.

I'm going to go off subject a little here and tell about something that might be not be relevant or contribute to the book review or summary but might hit a chord with other reviewers.

I take lots of notes when reading books. It helps me with my reviews and I go back into them to refresh myself if it has been a while in between one book and the next book of the series. Recently, I've been using voice to text to record the notes and I kept cracking up at what was actually being written in the notes. The program never adjusted to “Lord Irrick” and it was never consistent with what it thought it heard. Iam not sure if it is the way I pronounce things or what but the results were annoyingly funny. It wrote “Lord Eric” most of the time but it also wrote then “Lori Rick”, “lore ick”, and “Laura Rock”. I kept on having to correct it which took more time than it was worth.

Back to the actual book review.

Ryn was easy to like except that she was easily fooled and made a lot of wrong assumptions and conclusions about things that seemed obvious to me which caused her a lot of hardships she could have avoided.

I am getting ready to download the next book in the series. show less