TL;DR Review: A spitfire of a heroine. A lovely balance between warrior and healer, fighter and caretaker.
Synopsis:
When old secrets catch fire, everything will burn.
In a mortal world colonized by the gods and ruled over by the Descended, their cruel offspring, Diem Bellator yearns to escape the insular life of her poor village.
Her mother’s sudden disappearance—and the discovery of a dangerous secret about her past—offer Diem an unexpected opportunity to enter the dark world of Descended royalty and unlock the web of mysteries her mother left behind.
With the dying King’s handsome, mysterious heir watching her every move, and a ruthless mortal alliance recruiting her to join the growing civil war, Diem will have to navigate the unwritten rules of love, power, and politics in order to save her family—and all of mortalkind.
Full Review:
Diem Bellator may be my new favorite badass romantasy heroine!
Let’s get one thing straight: she’s earned every bit of it, with years of training under her mother as a healer, and under her General father in the arts of combat. She knows her way around a scalpel as well as a killing blade, and can tend to wounds as well as she can make them.
But what makes her such a badass is her resilience and strength of spirit.
She has suffered a great deal—as have all the people of her world—under the Descended (essentially, elves/High Fae), doubly so when her mother vanishes and leaves her father to raise her and her younger brother alone. Diem also feels the burden to take her mother’s place as a healer, tending to both the mortals and the Descended (with equal efficiency uninfluenced by personal feelings, as expected from one who’s taken the healer’s oath). But within her is this urge to do more, to push harder, to step out from beneath the shadow of her parents and change—whether herself or the world around her, she doesn’t know yet.
And most of all, she feels compelled to FIGHT. To fight against the injustices of her world. To fight against the oppression of the Descended and the horrific rule that any half-mortal, half-Descended must be murdered. To fight against the King’s stringent laws that allow the Descended to get away with doing whatever they want. To fight against anyone who would try to get her to sit down and shut up because that is not who she was raised to be.
She is a spitfire in every way—and an absolute joy to read because of it—but she’s also as flawed and realistic as you could wish for in a heroine/protagonist. She struggles, suffers, cries, fears, and worries like the rest of us, and that makes her a fully human character you absolutely want to read more about. Her journey is filled with unexpected twists and surprises, but she faces each with that strength of spirit that makes her such a compelling character.
The plot of this book is a lot of fun: her work as a healer brings her to the Palace, where she’s drawn into the path—and charm—of the dark, brooding Prince Luther, but also makes her ideal to help the humans who are working against the Descended in their efforts to bring down or strike back at the powerful overlords. There’s mystery, tension, reveals, heartbreak, loss, and happiness—plus, the beginnings of a deliciously slow-burn romance.
But what makes Spark of the Everflame so great is the fire that burns inside Diem and keeps her pushing toward making the right choice, even when she doesn’t know what that is—or worse, when she knows it may cost her dearly. The balance between healer and warrior is done beautifully and makes for a really engaging character I can’t wait to follow into more adventures in the rest of this series.
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