The Fire Within

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly I hate to say that this is one of the worst books I have read in a long time. The description had me very interested and I liked the cover artwork as well. This is not a purely negative review, but a really disappointed reader review.

The Fire Within is written by Racquel Kechagias. It is a Paranormal/Fantasy/Young Adult Novel. It deals with Vampires and Skinwalkers, as well as Shapeshifters and a plethora of other creatures. The beginning started out well, with the main Vampire Victor and his sharing of his soul in the hopes of finding a future wife…. A wonderful story set up.

Fast forward to the girl being born named Anna… And everything really goes downhill. She was an ok character, but seemed to be fairly one-dimensional until towards the end of the story when she finally gets a backbone. Victor was likeable in the beginning and then his personality really fades out in the story. Christian and Kayden seemed to have the most personality of all of the characters.

This book felt like the wonderful outline of an epic story. But there were so many things missing that as it stands, it just can’t deliver. Racquel has the breadth of vision, but really needs help in presentation of her idea. I can commend her for her original ideas in that this was not just another vampire novel. Her vision of the skinwalkers was terrifyingly fascinating. The “Fire Within” was a very unique view of a power (I won’t give it away).

However, with all of that being said, the book was seriously lacking in description. There were very few descriptions about scenery and people and clothing, and just the overall environment of the story. The only parts of the story that seemed to contain any description were in the dreams. Although there was no specific time period set for this story, it gave the impression that it was definitely behind modern times, given the castles and travel by horseback… So if that is true, than I was thrown off by so many time changing words thrown in that seemed out of place. For example, Anna’s horse is name Latte, the lingo was very modern in phrases such as “so to speak.” There are multiple mentions of clocks, which would not have existed, and the religion talk speaks more of a Christian God that seemed highly out of place given the rest of the story. On top of all of this, the grammar and typo issues made it hard to push through to the end. I was getting very frustrated with the seeming lack of understanding of certain English words such as motif being used instead of motive. Learnt being used in place of learned. And then quite constantly used when the word quiet would have made more sense. Once I did finally make it to the end, in my exasperation to finish the story… there was all this buildup to a fizzle ending.

Needless to say this was a hard story to get through. I think that if given the wonderful original ideas that Racquel has that this could become a really great story, it is still a long way from that. If The Fire Within was to have a proper editor go through this a lot of these issues could be alleviated. Add in the descriptors, paint your world for the rest of us to see if the way you have envisioned it in your mind. Fix the grammar and typos so as not to distract from the story. Add in more dimensional characters, tell us as the readers more about these characters so we can know them as they are known to you. That would make for a wonderful and enjoyable read. As it stands, I can’t give this book more than 2 out of 5 stars… I give it 2 for potential and for original thought.