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Review: Fire & Flood

Fire & Flood Fire & Flood by Demitria Lunetta
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

War. It’s a heavy little word. For some reason I’d had the idea that this was more of a rival gang situation.

So, what do we have here? Fire & Flood, book one of the new Mount Olympus Academy series. If you can't tell by the series name, it's set in a Percy Jackson-esque world in that it incorporates gods and monsters from greek mythology. But more than anything, I’d say that it resembles Harry Potter in how the main character gets whisked away from their crappy life into a magical boarding school that has different “classes” which are like the different “houses” in HP. And you best believe there is a super mean rival who literally has “cronies”.

While we’re doing comparisons, I’ll also throw in that not only is the main character in the Assassination Class, but that the authors also threw in the “Ass-Class” joke that fans of the Assassination Classroom series use. (Though I wouldn’t be surprised if this last reference is a coincidence.)

A banner of the Assassination Classroom manga by Yusei Matsui volume 1 cover

So yeah, there are a lot of references to other better series in this book. How does Fire & Flood hold up on its own? Unfortunately, not well.

Then he tells us to open our books to page three hundred and five. It's a chapter titled: “They're Not Actually Dead Until They Piss Themselves.”

“Alright, who wants to walk us through strangulation?” Kratos asks.

This book unfortunately reads as such a joke. Or a fanfiction. It is super not-serious, which adds comedic value at the expense of its perceived legitimacy. It didn’t help that it was pretty short and that the ending felt quite rushed. I don’t think this was a bad book by any means, it’s just that it didn’t have much going for it either. Very much the definition of a two-star book: Ok.

BONUS MEME:
“I loved your father. I loved him like he was my own son.”
Huh, that quote sounds oddly familiar…

A quote from Pewdiepie’s Minecraft series where he says the quote, Joergen was like a father to me, I loved him like my own son.


[Advanced reader’s copy solicited from one of the authors in exchange for an honest review]

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