Review: Definitely worth the $0.99
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2013
First of all, the world building was very impressive. It's clear that the author put a lot of thought into how this world works and how the elemental abilities affect the people and therefore the societies. I especially liked the idea of the Helian's second sun. The world building was great and really captured my interest. I could easily read other books in this series (and we can tell that there's gonna be at least one other - "Water") just so I could read more about the world.I could almost say the same for the characters... I really liked Roxy. I don't know if I'm in the minority here (out of the handful of other reviews I've skimmed, at least two others really seemed to not like her). People mention that they didn't like her selfishness or how ready she was to cause harm (in the beginning, anyway), but come on guys - what were you expecting from the princess of the Helian realm? Look at her mother - do you expect someone raised by that woman to be all sunshine and happiness? Yeah, Roxy is a mean girl, but it's easy to see that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.Although I really liked Roxy, I didn't quite believe how suddenly she decided to do her 180 at the end of the book. It would have been nice to see a bit more development there, to see her warm up to Brae a little more, or have her do something before deciding something which would be spoileriffic, even if a bit obvious, to mention. Jasmine, on the other hand, I found hard to like at first. Really, she was getting on my nerves with her overreactions regarding her hair and the fact that she was too afraid to talk about something so simple with her best friend. She didn't even have to actually tell him - she could have just asked him (or anyone, really) "Have you ever heard of people having purple streaks in their hair?" But towards the end I finally warmed up to her and liked her. Once she showed her backbone, that is.To the people who haven't read this or aren't very far: It's actually quite fun to make guesses at Jasmine's parentage, or what the deal with her hair is. I definitely recommend playing that guessing game.The one thing that really bugged me about this book though were some spelling errors, like when water was described as "scolding hot" or "folk law" was mentioned. And then there was "to catch up them." If the author used an editor, she might want to have a little word with him/her, and if she didn't, then it would probably be a good idea to get someone to check over the book. There were also parts where things `were bracketed like this' which was also annoying. Sorry to say, but if those little things weren't there (or if they didn't turn up all the time) then I would have given this review another star.That aside, Fire was a really fun book to read, especially when the two narrators finally came together and everything picked up a lot faster. The action scenes are written in a way that you can easily conjure up an image of it happening, and the characters are so diverse that everyone is bound to find one that they like. Although, the ending did feel a little rushed and I would have liked at least one more Roxy chapter.