Review: long, but interesting
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 6, 2013
3.5I generally enjoyed Alaskan Fire. I found Blaze and Jack endearing. I found the two of them together hilarious...vulgar, churlish, and occasionally infuriating, but all in a really funny way. They curse like sailors, call each-other names, sass each-other constantly and basically fight for 400 pages. But they also support and protect each-other at the same time. The bathtub scene was especially sweet, if a little disgusting.Between Blazes' size and strength and Jack's comparable shortness and large swath of helplessness, I found the whole reversal of gender roles a nice addition. So was the fact that Jack was a wereverine instead of a werewolf. It's interesting that King decided to make her male lead the less glamorised species. I don't know that I'd read a book about what Blaze is either. (I'm trying not to spoil it.) So it was something different.I did occasionally want to gag at Blazes' tendency to revel in being protected when she was so obviously a capable woman. It felt very much like she was choosing helplessness over competence at times. I had similar feelings about the sex scenes (though there really weren't many of them) and how much she wanted to be dominated...and how often the reader is reminded of how 'male,' masculine,' 'manly' Jack is. Surely there are more creative ways to say Blaze thought his strength was attractive.The book did seem to go on and on...and on and on and on. The book is roughly 550 pages long and there really isn't any more to the plot than your average PNR, which is usually between 250 and 350 pages. I actually started to laugh toward the end as I passed ending after ending, only to find another chapter leading to what could have (really probably should have) been the conclusion. By which I mean scenes that would traditionally be the end of a PNR book. There are four or five of them consecutively. Plus, after the first appropriate place to wrap up, the book's feel changes dramatically. It went from angsty and angry to hearts and flowers almost instantly.The feeling of endlessness was also exacerbated by the fact that throughout the book any and everything took forever and a day to actually happen or happened more than once--the second and third escape attempt, for example. There were large chunks of downtime--the whole Brad and the rain section, almost all of the farming/building scenes, etc. And there was A LOT of ranting on about heritage breeds and such. Now I completely agree with the message in all of it, but it was played just a little heavy handedly...or maybe repeated too frequently.All-in-all I'm glad to have read it, would happily read the sequel if it fell in my lap, and will keep my eyes open for more of Sara King's writing. I think the book could do with a fairly ruthless pair-down to tighten the plot up, but I still enjoyed it.