Wildefire (Wildefire, #1) in Multiculturalism in YA,Fantasy, Sci FI,Paranormal and fun books ;p

May 04, 2013 Heather Heffner rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. LET ME START OFF by saying that Wildefire is a fun, adrenaline-filled ride featuring everything from Egyptian gods of death to weird blue-eyed monsters straight out of Knight’s imagination. After a fight-gone-wrong at her old school leads to a fellow student's death, Polynesian-descended Ashline Wilde attends a private school in California, where she discovers she's the reincarnation of Pele the volcano goddess. Together with five other reincarnations--aforementioned awesome Egyptian goddess Raj LET ME START OFF by saying that Wildefire is a fun, adrenaline-filled ride featuring everything from Egyptian gods of death to weird blue-eyed monsters straight out of Knight’s imagination. After a fight-gone-wrong at her old school leads to a fellow student's death, Polynesian-descended Ashline Wilde attends a private school in California, where she discovers she's the reincarnation of Pele the volcano goddess. Together with five other reincarnations--aforementioned awesome Egyptian goddess Raja, Japanese snow goddess Lily, Norse god Rolfe, Haitian-descended Zulu god Ade, and a Greek siren--they work to uncover the mystery of what their purpose is in the world. However, other older reincarnations with not-so-pure motives have their eyes on them.

Knight's style of writing does take some getting used to. This is definitely a no-nonsense, leap-headfirst-into-the-action type of book that doesn't dive too deep, and if you stop to breathe, then the story will be ten miles ahead of you. The opening scene alone introducing our budding volcano goddess, Ashline Wilde, and her older sister nemesis, Eve, demands a huge suspension of disbelief. Ashline gets into a fight with the popular girl at school who stole her scummy boyfriend, soundly kicks her *ss, but then said popular girl returns for vengeance and Eve kills her.

Hmmm.

There's been a lot of reader discussion about the rather flippant attitude toward the violence in the book. Some readers have announced frustration that Ashline got into a fight, but I wasn't so bothered by that. Young literary guys don't get as much backlash for fighting--our culture seems to think it's expected of them, so why is it so taboo for girls to vent steam, too? After all, Ash is a young teenager prone to making mistakes--and a brooding volcano goddess at that. Pele isn't known for sweeping issues under the rug.

I did, however, find myself jarred from the narrative when Ashline sees Eve kill the popular girl and has a moment or two of guilt, but nothing earth-shattering. The book immediately moves on before giving Ashline time to grieve for her loss of innocence, the pointless violence of Lizzie Jacobs' death, the craziness of her sister, or something that would make her more 3-D than two-dimensional. I felt like I was the invisible person on the sidelines, screaming, "Hey! You do know Jacobs is actually dead, right? Your classmate? Someone's daughter? She can't come back. She's gone." Unfortunately, the moment just felt too glossed over, leaving the reader with the feeling that a) Okay, Eve is a psychopath and b) What does Ashline stand for? I don't know yet.

Read the rest of my review at:
http://heatherheffner.blogspot.com/20... ...more

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May 02, 2013 fabby rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gods-goddess-deities

it started really good i liked her response with the boyfriend and the girl he cheated with (laughs) and then the sister came and ruined a really funny moment (sighs) she then leaves town for a school in the middle of nowhere where she meets other people who just might be having the same supernatural problem her sister has and that she doesn't seem to want to develop and dont forget the hottie ranger that seems obsessed with getting to know her and he is so sweet and really understanding about h ...more

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Aug 25, 2013 The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears marked it as cup-full-of-hell-no

When the term "exotic" is used to describe a book featuring a Polynesian main character and (supposedly) based on Polynesian culture (supposedly interchangable...NOT) then it's a book that ends up on my sorry-but-no shelf. ...more

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