Phoenix Unbound

I wanted to like this a lot more than I actually do. There's a lot going for it – cool backdrop, neat magic, interesting characters. But there's also a lot of questionable things included in the story. The heroine of the book, Gilene has power over fire. Every year, each town in this kingdom is required to send one woman to be a sacrifice to the gods on the spring equinox. With her powers, Gilene is immune to fire, and thus is sent EVERY year to be the sacrifice for her town. Despite her gift of fire mastery, she does pay a price. Every year the sacrifices are given to the gladiators to rape AND she suffers horrible burns from her power.

THEN you have the love interest of the book, Azarion, who was sold from his village to be a gladiator. He is the special favorite of the empress, who rapes him basically every night.

Lots of rape, is all I'm saying.

Azarion and Gilene are EVENTUALLY pretty cute together, but over all they kinda treat each other not so great at first. This could have been a really interesting, well rounded story but it ultimately isn't. Entertaining, I suppose, but I probably won't pick it up again.