Review: A great novel!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 27, 2014
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.This book is straight up fantasy. The story revolves around Yi who has recently lost his family, his grief a heavy burden to bear. He rescues Tulip during his travels to see the Emperor, and adopts her as his daughter.It’s all pretty straight forward really, there’s villains and a really cool fantasy element involving lightening. There’s interesting creatures and politics. There’s no romance (I was so pleased by this!) and it was so well written. I very much enjoyed reading The Warrior & The Flower, it was nice to get lost in something that was so different.The story is not complicated to follow and everything is explained clearly, you know exactly what is going on and there’s no mystery as to who the bad guys are (at least…I don’t think so). It is the first book of a series so naturally ends in a cliffhanger of sorts.Yi and Tulip were both delightful characters, their interactions were great and Tulip is such an inquisitive child. I was a bit apprehensive about her, because she’s 8 years old and could have been a little brat; but she held such charm. She did everything she could think of to please Yi, even when it meant running in to trouble. Her story is an interesting one, and I’m looking forward to seeing it develop further as the series continues. Yi was also wonderful, his bafflement at some of the things Tulip says and does is very amusing, but he is also very protective of her.The only thing I found disappointing is that Camille Picott skips over what in other fantasy novels are the boring bits – the travelling and so on. It seemed a little jumpy because of this, so a joining sentence or two wouldn’t have gone astray. But aside from that I loved it, and cannot wait to read the second book!