THE LAST OF THE FIREDRAKES
by Farah Oomerbhoy

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Pub Date: Aug 15, 2015
Publisher: Wise Ink Creative Publishing
Length: 488 pages
Spoilers: N/A
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I received this free digital book from YA Bound Book Tours in exchange for my honest review.

16-year-old Aurora Darlington is an orphan. Mistreated by her adopted family and bullied at school, she dreams of running away and being free. But when she is kidnapped and dragged through a portal into a magical world, suddenly her old life doesn’t seem so bad.

Avalonia is a dangerous land ruled by powerful mages and a cruel, selfish queen who will do anything to control all seven kingdoms–including killing anyone who stands in her way. Thrust headlong into this new, magical world, Aurora’s arrival sets plans in motion that threaten to destroy all she holds dear.

With the help of a young fae, a magical pegasus, and a handsome mage, Aurora journeys across Avalonia to learn the truth about her past and unleash the power within herself. Kingdoms collide as a complicated web of political intrigue and ancient magic lead Aurora to unravel a shocking secret that will change her life forever.

Dumbest MC
Aurora is your stereotypical stupid, whiny, crying teenage girl. She spends the first half of the book crying (literally) because her life is so miserable and blah, blah, blah. Of course, after that, she just decides to do the EXACT opposite of everything the adults tell her to do even when they explain exactly why she shouldn’t do it: i.e. your life is in danger and you were crying about that for the last five chapters. So… why are you gallivanting off like a dipshit? Anyone got an answer for me? I don’t honestly think teenagers are this dumb.

Unrealistic Relationships
“Oh my gosh! We’re best friends! I care so much about you and was so worried about you because we just met yesterday!” …says no one ever. -.- Seriously. All the relationships in this story developed WAAAAY too fast. No one becomes friends overnight. I mean, they might, but not when their interactions have been minimal at best and they haven’t actually bonded over anything. Oh and don’t even get me STARTED on the god-awful romantic relationships in this story. The teenage girl pining over some dude is soooo last decade.

Coincidence? I think not!
Well, we’ve covered the fact that Aurora is a dipshit, and you know what happens to dipshits? They get themselves into bad situations. You know what’s more important than that? They can’t find their own way out of said situations! Someone else has to come to the rescue EVERY. SINGLE. TIME! And that person just happens to waltz in EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Uh… coincidence? I don’t think so! More like a pathetic MC and even worse story progression.

Holy F—ing Chosen One, Batman!
Head, meet wall. BANG! BANG! BANG! Good. Freakin’. A! This story line has been done soooo many times now and this particular version just kept getting worse because of the: “you’re special. No, you’re actually special. But really you’re even more special than special. No, no! You’re the specialest of specials!” I DON’T CARE! You know what would be special? If your MC wasn’t special, but still did amazing things anyway. But noooooo. That would be too boring, wouldn’t it? Ugh! I quit! *throws arms in air*

So… that contest thing…
For those of you who don’t know, this book got published because it was amazingly popular on a community writing site called Wattpad. It was considered to be amazingly written… and then I found myself dying through most of it. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but info-dump, info-dump, excessive reliance on dialogue, I don’t even care about the characters, skip, skip, skip. To be honest, I found the actual quality of writing to be mediocre. Not awful, but not great. It definitely wasn’t enough to keep me interested and neither was the story. So… I ended up skimming about the last… oh… 70% of the book. I finished it, though?