Non-Review: A Promise of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles #1)

A Promise of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles #1)
By Amanda Bouchet

Published By: Piatkus
Publication Date: August 2, 2016
Date Abandoned: February 14, 2023
Genre: Adult – Fantasy Romance
Source: Bought
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 441

From Goodreads:
KINGDOMS WILL RISE AND FALL FOR HER…
BUT NOT IF SHE CAN HELP IT

Catalia “Cat” Fisa lives disguised as a soothsayer in a traveling circus. She is perfectly content avoiding the danger and destiny the Gods-and her homicidal mother-have saddled her with. That is, until Griffin, an ambitious warlord from the magic-deprived south, fixes her with his steely gaze and upsets her illusion of safety forever.

Griffin knows Cat is the Kingmaker, the woman who divines the truth through lies. He wants her as a powerful weapon for his newly conquered realm-until he realizes he wants her for much more than her magic. Cat fights him at every turn, but Griffin’s fairness, loyalty, and smoldering advances make him increasingly hard to resist and leave her wondering if life really does have to be short, and lived alone.

A Promise of Fire is a book that has been on my radar, and my TBR, for quite some while. As a huge fantasy fan, I was super excited about finally picking this one up. It has been likened to some of my favourite fantasy romance series and I have some friends who absolutely loved this book, so I was excited and I had really high hopes for this one… maybe they were just a little bit too high as I ended up being really disappointed with this one.

A Promise of Fire follows Cat, a kingmaker who finds herself held captive by Griffin, a southern warlord, who is desperate for change. This book has everything that should have made me love it. It has Greek mythology, an exciting adventure-type plot and a romance. But, I’m just left confused and feeling very meh about the whole thing. I don’t know if I feel like this because I listened to the audiobook, and I didn’t really like the narrator, but I kept zoning out and it just couldn’t keep my interest. This book already has a really intricate setting for a fantasy world, so when mention of the Greek Gods came into it it just didn’t feel natural to me. I felt like they had been shoehorned in and they weren’t actually integral to the plot. The character development and plot would have happened just the same, in my opinion, without any mention or appearance of the Gods and their magic… so I was just left asking why they were even in there at all.

I got to around 65% of A Promise of Fire before I gave up. I could feel myself slumping. Seriously 2023 has been the year of the book slumps and it’s only February when I am writing this. I just didn’t care all that much, I was bored and just felt like the whole book felt a little bit disjointed. I am super disappointed, especially after seeing this book likened to JLA’s From Blood and Ash series which is a favourite of mine. I just can’t continue, and maybe I’d have felt different if I read this one physically, rather than through audiobook but it just wasn’t for me.

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