Fire Study

And the rant begins. This is a rant and I don't care if it's not coherent. But honestly, at the end of the day, I enjoyed the plot of the book and it was fun reading it.Honestly, I got sucked into this book immediately, in fact I got so sucked I didn't realise I read 200 pages where nothing happened. We went on this wild goose chase around Sitia searching for Cahil and Ferde, who had been hyped up to be this unstoppable force. We went around, fought, got this curare shit, fought again, only to find and stop them withing a few pages. A few goddamn pages. Mind you, this is the first 200 pages of this roughly 450-page book...But oh wait? We need to make this interesting? Guess what, Valek is here! Oh shit what? Cahil has infiltrated the council and convinced them to take his side? SHIT! Wait what? Yelena has to go and do lessons with some shady AF story weaver, cool! OH SHIT SHE'S IN THE FIRE. Nevermind Valek and Leif saved her life.This is an outline of how things happen, and even if I highlight this specific part, it's how it wet down for the whole book. Eventually, our characters are shipped to Ixia and MAN EVERYONE IN THE BOOK COMPLAINED ABOUT YELENA IN IXIA WHERE I THOUGHT "YEY, OLD YELENA IS BACK". Also, some of the "twists" really weren't twists at all, Tauno was in my suspicion from when they almost got caught in the camp. Like jesus how dumb does the author think we are? ALSO ALSO the author thought she could convince us even for a SECOND that Valek had died. Lady I've been reading your books, he ain't dying.Don't get me STARTED with Yelena. She remained stubborn all throughout the book and pushed people away from her when there was so reason! I will take no excuse, there was no reason. She was such an awful friend to Moon Man, such an awful sister to Leif and SUCH A BAD PARTNER TO VALEK. My heart goes out to the three because they were treated poorly. What infuriates me most is how the author OBVIOUSLY KNOWS HOW TO WRITE A CARING CHARACTER SINCE ALL THREE I LISTED ARE. So the author actively CHOSE to make Yelena a stubborn little shit! I hate it! Now that I'm done complaining, let's get to the things I liked.I loved most of the characters except for Yelena in this book. I ADORED Leif and Moon Man, and LOVED Ari and Janco. Another character I loved that we didn't get enough of is Irys. We talked to her for a bit at the start and never got round to seeing her again. Irys being my favourite character, this annoyed me greatly. I also have gathered three quotes I'd like to keep from this book;"Truthfully, I didn't like the distrustful and mean person you became in Ixia. The fire brought my real sister back. So be careful, as I'd like to keep her around for a while." ~Leif"There's always another storm. It's the way the world works. Snowstorms, rainstorms, Wind-storms, sandstorms and firestorms. Some are fierce and others are small. You have to deal with them separately, but you need to always keep an eye on what's brewing for tomorrow." ~JancoAnd lastly."Janco made a comment about Valek's lack of hair. "You ever notice how couples start to look alike?"In a deadpan, Valek replied, "Yes. In fact, I was just thinking how much you and Topaz resemble each other. It's uncanny.""