Review: Cursed By Fire by Danielle Annett

Book Blurb:

It has been six years since the Awakening and peace in Spokane, Washington is still tenuous at best. The vampires and shifters are all vying for control of the city and the humans seem to be the ones suffering the consequences, or so it seems. Aria Naveed has spent the last two years of her life fighting to make the many wrongs of the world right, but soon finds out that the humans aren’t as weak as they appear and may be a more terrifying foe than any of the other races combined. When a stranger rolls into town with trouble on his heels, Aria finds herself trapped in the middle of a battle that could cost her more than she has bargained for as a fight for justice turns into an unexpected fight for her life.

My Review:

2 Out Of 5 Stars

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Supernatural, Werewolves, Vampires

Aria Naveed lived on the streets for years after her parent’s death, until she one day stumbled into being a mercenary. Aria is able to control fire, but tells no one and passes herself off as just another human. Since the Awakening, when vampires and shapeshifters revealed themselves to the public, humans have been hostile and scared. Aria is drawn into a case of a murdered boy by the shapeshifter pack, but while looking for his killer, she finds truths she never knew were buried.

I went into this book with no real idea of what it was about, just that it is a new urban fantasy series. I lurv myself urban fantasy, so I was really excited. So while I was reading this book, I had a slight feeling of déjà vu, as if I had read this before. Or something incredibly similar. My favorite series is the Kate Daniels book by the writing duo of Ilona Andrews, and not to be obtuse, but there were things pinging left and right that set of warning bells in my brain while reading, yet I could not quite put my finger on it. To be fair, I have been distracted and really tired, so my spidey senses are dulled. This book unfortunately was a poorly done version of the Kate Daniels series. I don’t know what the author was going for here, but you can’t mess with perfection because it never ends well. Once I started to see the big flags waving in my face that this is not right, I went on Goodreads and read other peoples reviews. I feel much better knowing that I was not alone in my opinion that I had read this idea before, because it had been done (in my humble opinion) better by Ilona Andrews. Then I saw that this book has scandal all over it and a twitter comment by my said favorite author, and it kind of made me lose interest in going on. I really must be living under a rock because I had no idea that anything was amiss in my happy little urban fantasy world. I of course finished reading the book even with all that I knew because I have a compulsive habit to do so. To be honest, there were a few changes here and there, but the basic idea is so copied that I can’t get behind this series. I am not going to go into the details of the copied ideas because other reviews do so you can find them elsewhere, but let me just say there were too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. I will stick with the original version of this idea, hands down. What this book successful accomplished was giving me the desire to pick up a Kate Daniels book to read.

On a side note, Aria says she is mercenary, but after reading this book, that is completely wrong. Kate is a mercenary, called to cases where she might need to battle or use magic to stop an incident. But Aria was more of a private investigator who looks for clues to solve cases the police doesn’t want. Aria was not in the slightest a mercenary in the book, which makes me wonder why the author chose said career when something less similar was more appropriate. Confounding, really. Also, Aria has a secret weapon tattooed on her that manifests as a real weapon when needed. I read an awesome series by Keri Davidson where the main character has weapons hidden on her body as tattoos and I liked this concept the first times I read it. I am not sure if I am a fan of how it was used here. Overall I am just disappointed in this whole situation.

I received this title from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.