All This Power And You Are Still The Scariest Thing In The Sky

I recently finished reading Of Flame and Fury by Mikayla Bridges.

~POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT~

  Rating: 3.75/5 stars

"On an island built from ash and shrouded in fire, phoenix racing is a sport just as profitable as it is deadly.

Seventeen-year-old Kel Varra and her team of underdogs, the Crimson Howlers, are desperate to win the annual races and the fortune that comes with it. But the Howlers need a new rider, which leads Kel to join forces with Warren “Coup” Coupers – an arrogant rival she can’t get out of her head.

As tensions rise on and off the track, Kel's home is mistakenly burned down, and she’s forced to take a job from a mysterious tech mogul with an unsettling interest in her phoenix, Savita. This sets in motion a conspiracy that threatens everyone Kel cares for, especially Coup, for whom her embers of resentment are quickly igniting into something dangerously new."

Phoenix racing scenes? Plentiful.

Hints of fake dating? Yes.

A non-broody MMC with a personality besides being a mysterious bad boy? Also yes.

Lots of lore on phoenixes? Hell yes.

I will say, I know publishers are being liberal with the enemies to lovers term for marketing purposes, but this really isn’t an enemies to lovers story. Coup, the MMC, is a phoenix racer known for his reckless style of flight that the FMC, Kel, dislikes. But they’re really not enemies. His manner just rubs her the wrong way and she thus finds him grating. They start to warm up to each other quite quickly.

And this brings me to their relationship development. In my opinion, the author didn’t quite manage the transition from reluctant teammates to lovers here. While I actually did enjoy their relationship once they’d gotten to know each other more, I found Kel’s change in how she thought about Coup a little sudden and not well developed enough. There’s a pretty pivotal scene that leads to this change in their dynamic, and while I liked the idea behind it, I just don’t think their feelings for each other were showcased enough prior to this. I would have loved to have the fake dating trope (that I liked here!) explored more and utilized to its full potential for more cute moments between them.

Onto the phoenix racing plot point. I really loved the whole concept behind the phoenix racing and the entire teams behind the sport. The mechanics of it were fascinating, and I almost wished we could have gotten more deeply into the sponsorship aspects and technical aspects of this sport, though we did get plenty of racing scenes. I liked that the phoenixes were portrayed as willful, powerful animals that really couldn’t be controlled. They weren’t cuddly, they weren’t docile — they were beautiful, wild animals that could easily kill humans in their vicinity, and their danger was palpable whenever they were on-page. That said, yes, the worldbuilding did feel a tiny bit bare overall. I really wish we had gotten more information on other racers and teams, because the lack of it led to the world feeling strangely empty at times.

Aside from that, the book had an overarching plot that also slowly builds throughout the book. This one, as it is revealed, was slightly predictable. It was fine and competently executed, but not nearly as compelling as the aforementioned elements. There was a pretty surprising plot point involving another character that sprang up in the last batch of chapters that threw me off for a while and made me question why exactly the author added it. Yes, it’s tied to a certain revelation pertaining to the FMC, but I felt like it was unnecessary and distracted me from the story as I tried to make sense of it.

Otherwise, I’ll just reiterate again that I had fun with this! It’s definitely not a perfectly written book and not some wildly original masterpiece, but it delivers on excitement and is, in my opinion, a well-executed YA fantasy story.

Check out Incandescent, and discover what happens when Phoenix Racing is taken to the next level.