Burn is the first book in ‘The Phoenix Omega Trilogy. It stars Egan, an omega phoenix shifter, and Tamon, a warlock. This is told in first person from both Egan and Tamon’s povs.

2.5 Stars



First the cover. I really like it. Bright and vibrant, and I’m going to guess it was created by Natasha Snow because it looks like her style.

The plot. The blurb does a decent job of explaining the plot so I won’t go into it much. It does leave out two significant characters, the other phoenix omega shifters who raised Egan, Azur and Cyrus. I found the writing style in the story convoluted and disjointed. It felt like the authors couldn’t make up their minds on whether to make this a contemporary or fantasy fic. It could be a fantasy set in a contemporary setting, instead Egan, Cyrus, and Azur lived in an old church in their own bubble which created a historical fantasy sort of setting which conflicted with the contemporary fantasy. Part of that was also the archaic speech on Cyrus and Azur’s part. There wasn’t much background info about Tamon, except he was running away from his powerful family and an arranged marriage. No info in how the human world, Mage world, and shifter worlds functioned together. Instead, the authors threw in info like, ‘this is this way, and just believe it, because we aren’t going to explain it.’ Info and scenes felt disconnected, they didn’t segue well together. It was like multiple people had their own ideas of how the story should go and then forced it all together instead of smoothing out scenes.

The explanation about how phoenix mates and resurrection happened was not clear until later in the book. Instead of explaining what happened with phoenixes in the beginning, the authors gave an oddly worded explanation in different places throughout the book and didn’t fully explain about phoenix rebirth until three-fourths of the way into the story when Egan is pregnant. This is a problem I’ve found in previous books by these authors, they don’t explain the world they created very well. They put out a lot of books so I would’ve expected them to grow in their writing. Instead, it’s the same issues over and over except with different settings and characters.

There was so much monologue and telling in this book it bored me. The characters told us what they thought, the environment, their feelings. I felt like I was being fed the information instead of feeling the story. I grew bored and had to put the book down numerous times to go read another story, and then come back to this one. There was also a lot of repetitive thoughts and explanations of actions between characters and after a dialogue or action scene. This story could have been shortened if the repetition was removed.

I liked Cyrus and Azur, but didn’t care for Egan. Mostly that was because his voice was terribly inconsistent and he told a lot of internal monologue. In the beginning his speech was similar to Azur and Cyrus’s, a bit archaic with no contractions. Once Tamon and Egan started to converse, Egan’s voice switched to modern teenager with contractions. Why didn’t the authors keep Egan’s voice consistent? Why didn’t betas/proofers/editor tell the authors about the numerous problems? Unless the authors aren’t using anyone to check their stories. But it only ended up harming the character Egan because he was inconsistent.

There’s one scene I liked a lot in the story. It was the sex talk scene between Azur and Tamon while they were in town. That was fun. I do wonder why Azur told Tamon, “it can’t be the first (condoms) because they’re of no use to a warlock.” Seriously? No explanation of why not, but warlocks can get omegas pregnant, so why no condoms? Was it because of warlocks don’t get diseases? They why not say so? Later, a conflict arises of why Egan is so tired. Warlocks need condoms to prevent pregnancy but it’s brushed off by Azur. This is one of those inconsistencies or failures to further explain what the authors had intended so the scene is left dangling. There are numerous inconsistences like this in the ARC.

I read an ARC so I’m not going to grade on the SPAG errors, but oh boy, there were a ton of them. Most ARCs I’ve read have a few errors, but this one was like I was reading a draft copy. I really hope the errors were fixed before the book was published because it was bad.

Overall, I’m disappointed in this story. The setting is great, as is the cover. The background of the world the authors created is pretty much non-existent. The writing isn’t smooth or cohesive with way too much telling and monologue. And Egan’s voice is inconsistent. I’d like to find out more about Cyrus’s warlock, but if the writing, world building and plot, is as poor as in this book, I’ll have to think about it. I want to give, Burn 2.5 stars, but since I can’t give half stars, I give this 3 Stars.



I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review. ( )