I liked a lot of things about Flame in the Dark. The main story arc is good, always moves forward, and captures your attention. I have two main issues with this book: there’s a lot of rambling in the middle of narration and big problems aren’t addressed in a timely manner. I’ve noticed both of these issues is the more recent Faith Hunter books, both this and the Jane Yellowrock series. I think I got hooked on the latter before she started doing these things and now I can’t stop reading them even though the frustrate me.

An example of the rambling:
Person 1: What do you want for dinner?
[Several pages of narration that is somehow an offshoot of eating dinner or going to dinner or what they’re doing before or after dinner]
Person 2: Tacos.

By the time we get to the “tacos” part I am so confused because I don’t even remember that there was a question to begin with. I really hope this is something that the writer and editor notice and work on, because these books could be so much better without the rambling. Not that it’s bad information that we’re getting, but it would be better to do it not between dialogue.

As for big problems taking a while to be addressed or resolved, this is also an issue in both series. It would be like every time you turn your head to the left your nose bleeds. You turn your head and think, “oh, I should get this looked at.” But do that 50 times and you see what I mean. The character doesn’t seem to think the nosebleeds are that urgent but it is clearly something that needs addressing and we don’t know why they’re happening in the first place.

If you’re interested in either of these books, I HIGHLY recommend the audiobook versions. Khristine Hvam is a gift to the audiobook community.

3/5 Stars

Read my review for the first and second books in this series..
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