Early Review – Seafire (Seafire, Book 1) by Natalie Parker (3.5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: August 28, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-0451478801
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Seafire series
Source: ARC from Amazon Vine
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
“After her family is killed by corrupt warlord Aric Athair and his bloodthirsty army of Bullets, Caledonia Styx is left to chart her own course on the dangerous and deadly seas. She captains her ship, the Mors Navis, with a crew of girls and women just like her, who have lost their families and homes because of Aric and his men. The crew has one mission: stay alive, and take down Aric’s armed and armored fleet.
But when Caledonia’s best friend and second-in-command barely survives an attack thanks to help from a Bullet looking to defect, Caledonia finds herself questioning whether to let him join their crew. Is this boy the key to taking down Aric Athair once and for all…or will he threaten everything the women of the Mors Navis have worked for?”
This is the first book in the Seafire series by Parker (this is a planned trilogy). I got this to review through the Amazon Vine program. The cover is beautiful and the synopsis really drew me in. The story itself was fairly engaging and definitely fast-paced. I am not a huge fan of pirate -themed books and reading about sea battles; so if you don’t enjoy those types of books you probably won’t enjoy this. I ended up liking this book more than I expected, despite the piratic theme.
This book is basically one vicious sea battle after the next followed by periods of running from place to place. The theme that is really driven in throughout the book is sisterhood and how important it is for a self made, self-sufficient group of women to support and care for each other.
The book is very fast-paced and easy to read. The story is fairly engaging, but there wasn’t a lot to it. This was a book where I turned through pages fast and read it fast but in the end I wasn’t really all that eager to read more….if that makes any sense. One of those books where you race to the end and then think “huh, not much actually really happened in here”.
My last complaint is that the ending was an awful cliffhanger. I hate it when authors try to “bully” readers in continuing to read a series rather than letting the quality of the story and characters speak for themselves.
Overall this was an easy fast-paced read about pirates and strong women characters and sisterhood. I loved the fast-pace, but didn’t really enjoy the setting or theme. I am not huge on battles at sea and don’t really like reading about them which is pretty much all this book is. Additionally, the cliffhanger ending was absolutely horrible…you have been warned. I don’t plan on continuing with the series.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– New Release Reading Challenge
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
