Revealed In Fire (ARC review) – Teaming up

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The following review is part of my being in the author’s review team, which ensures that you can read it before the book comes out.

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It might have been a year and nine months since K.F. Breene published Warrior Fae Princess, the eighth book of the DDVN World series, but it does not show a bit, when I sit and read Revealed In Fire. The same snark, the same sass, the same possibility of losing your eyebrows (oh, wait, that’s Reagan’s thing!), the same crazy, the same fun. But more action, and more bad guys to subdue for the better of, this time, the magical world.

There is one major difference, however: this time, all three heroines of the series, Reagan, Penny, and Charity, are teaming up to fight and achieve this goal. Want to remember them and their respective journey, or to know who they are? You can read my review of each sub-series in the links highlighting each name.

What the book is about

Synopsis:

The DDVN World story continues, largely told from Reagan’s point of view, but including all major players.

Reagan’s trip down to the underworld was never going to remain a mystery. And now Lucifer is actively looking for the woman and her vampire cohort that raised hell in his domain. 

When a band of demons come to the surface with a note asking after Lucifer’s heir, the truth of Reagan’s true lineage can no longer be hidden.

The problem is, the elves remember Lucifer’s past heir, and how he nearly took down the Realm. This time, they do not intend to stand by while Lucifer finds his heir and raises her to power. This time, they’ll cut the problem out at the root.

Reagan went from a nobody in NOLA, to the most wanted woman in all the worlds. It’s time for her to own who and what she is. It’s time for her to fight back.

The path is set for Reagan

The ladies might be teaming up, but the truth of the matter, as the title and the cover hint, is that the action is mostly centred around Reagan Somerset and if you haven’t read the previous books, please stop there, for it contains spoilers from them.

You’re OK with my spoiling the first eight books? Here we go! Reagan has decided to own up to the fact that she is Lucifer’s daughter and this book is also about her choosing her own path. No, that’s not because she has gone stir crazy after months hidden in a vampire-made golden cage! Although going stir crazy she does.

However, her decision doesn’t surprise me the least. After all, Reagan Somerset always meets challenges head-on and this is the challenge of her life. My only part of sadness is when she must part with her bondmate (aka Darius Durant, hot vampire extraordinaire) because he cannot go meet the elves without serious problems for him.

Nothing is only black or white

In Revealed In Fire, more than in most of K.F. Breene’s books, what strikes me is the abundance of grey areas, where the characters sometimes thread a very fine line between what is good and what isn’t. We already knew that Vlad does have his good side, although this one is visibly for his own purposes, but some other characters will have, at times, extremely surprising shades of grey, for instance, when we see an important main character showing that power and influence games are not only the thing of the vampires! It becomes even more surprising after the part the vampires played in this character’s goals.

So let’s get used to the grey areas in some beloved characters. They might actually become something not so grey in the end. Who knows what Breene has up her sleeve there?

Terrible, terrible elves!

Who said that the elves are nice people? Because they are not! We had a hint of it in the Penny books, when Emery mentioned that they had condemned him to death for having played a prank with his now deceased brother, Conrad. We also had a good glimpse of it in the Charity books, when they had to kill some of them on their way to her land. However, this is nothing compared to what we finally see in Revealed In Fire, when we find, in the elves, the Realm version of the Brink’s former Mages’ Guild: corrupt, power hungry, unnecessary violent entities, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on Lucifer’s heir, for their own nefarious purposes. If this does not satisfy you, the way they will treat said heir, aka Reagan, will definitely tell you that they are, in this book, the ones to eliminate.

And who knew that Reagan, usually the very violent one, would become the voice of reason against the injustices committed by the elves? That alone is all sorts of fabulous!

Meeting the elves is also when we see that the pyramid of power established in the second trilogy is extremely powerful when they are together, and that angry natural dual-mages are all sorts of gross!

Did you say action?

If my previous sentence does not clue you in, Revealed In Fire has a law-hawt of action, from the prologue to the cliffhanger ending. (Yes, the book ends with a cliffhanger and K.F. Breene is not sorry about it in the least – the next book of the series does come out on 30 July so why should she be?)

Be it fight scenes action or training action (here, I will only say two words: Chapter 16), we have our fill of magical action of all sorts.

Hilarious and then some

Those familiar with the series know that when Reagan and Penny are together, hilarity is assured. Usually at Penny’s expense, but who’s keeping tabs! Even when she finally manages to break down a door, it becomes a completely pee-your-pants-laughing moment as she is met with an extremely awkward situation, of which Reagan makes fun for quite some time afterwards.

And that is just one of the many funny moments of the book. The Red Prophet and Karen Bristol take more of the funnies to their credit with their profound dislike of each other leading to some of the best comeback lines of the book, and Callie and Dizzy play their part as well. In fact, there are so many good one-liners that I cannot give too many of them away without spoiling the fun for the readers. But here is one:

Needless to say that we need those laughs, because without them, the tension we feel in the book would be unbearable.

My verdict

Reading that book went by too fast! Once more, K.F. Breene brings us the best of the best, with laughs, fear, tension, hot moments, and emotion… and a final cliffhanger. However, as I mentioned: do not get mad at her for it. The next book, Mentored In Fire, comes out four weeks after this one, on 30 July. And we will get to know the one who became, for the author, the ultimate antihero. Now if that doesn’t make you salivate (it sure does me!), I don’t know what will!

Another demonic five stars! ✰✰✰✰✰

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