Review: Rise of the Fire Tamer (The Wordwick Games #1) by Kailin Gow

Rise of the Fire Tamer (The Wordwick Games #1)
written by Kailin Gow
published by The Edge

find it here: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Goodreads

Why did I pick this book: I had participated in the blog tour hosted by I Am a Reader, Not a Writer. (I received a copy of this book for review purposes.)

Did I enjoy this book: This book was okay. The premise was good and sounded so promising. Unfortunately, Rise of the Fire Tamer did not meet my expectations. It just seemed underdeveloped and very predictable.

For a game that, in order to win, the player must use “magic words,” the words were not used or talked about all that often. I was expecting a lot more usage of these words. Shouldn’t the players have used these special words more than they did? It just didn’t make much sense to me. Words, and their definitions, should have been the focus of this book.

Also, there really weren’t any characters that were all that sympathetic or worthy of rooting for. The characters were forgettable. In fact, writing this review, I cannot remember these characters all that well. I could not get behind any of them. A few times, I wanted to like Kat but she failed to deliver. Gemma seemed too pretentious. I wish we would have learned more about these characters…their backgrounds, feelings, hopes, etc. What did their parents think about all of this? Where were the parents? Who the winner was going to be was obvious from the beginning of the game.

Furthermore, there were way too many typos and punctuation mistakes for me. A simple spell-check would have caught quite a few of the mistakes. It was distracting and took away from some of the pleasure of reading this book.

Would I recommend it: I don’t think that I would recommend this book.

Will I read it again: I will not.

About the book: After winning a contest for a popular game called Wordwick Games, five teens Gemma, Sparks, Rio, Kat, and Jack, are invited to stay at Wordwick Games inventor Henry Word’s mysterious castle and play the newest level of Workwick Games. Little do they know, the castle is the doorway to a wondrous world call Anachronia where words can be used as weapons, power, and commodity. There is unrest in Anachronia, and if the five teens can follow the rules of Wordwick Games and prove to be the best player, one of them will be crowned Ruler of Anachronia.

 

 

         Happy reading wherever you are and whenever you get a free chance!!!