Born of Fire is Syn & Shahara’s story. It is a very intense emotional rollercoaster that is superbly written; you can’t help but be sucked into their world. At times it is horrific in the level of pain and suffering detailed, both emotional and physical. Although we are more given a very strong impression as to the physical violence rather than blow by blow descriptions, the impression is enough, particularly when tied with the emphatic writing style.

This is not a light book. There are humorous moments, but it is more an intense adventure, overcoming adversity and bringing us into the realm of true love; for there is no doubt that there will be a happy-ending. The thought of reading this story without having that knowledge firmly planted in my brain makes me shudder.

Born of Fire really does have a huge ‘wow’ factor. When they say a book is a page turner, they mean something like this. It is gripping in its intensity, but it is also a wonderfully devised plot, with numerous twists and turns... completely unexpected twists and turns!

The characters are very well developed, although there were moments when I had had enough of the morbid pity party. We’d heard so much of bad childhood and life in general had been that every now and then it was just too much. It went from being heart-breaking to a response of ‘oh, get over it’ already. Thankfully not too often, I probably only found myself thinking that about three times in the book. But it was enough that in the middle of very emotional scenes for me to find the thought quite jarring.

That’s not too bad if that’s my only real complaint in such a long story. There aren’t a lot of side plots and although the characters from Born of Night do come into it (including Niykyrian) this can quite happily be read as a stand-alone novel. But it is also a wonderful continuation if you have read the first book (although, do read Sherrilyn Kenyon’s author note which explains the issues with the timeline).

Overall, this is just a wonderful story. Not paranormal romance, not like the dark-hunter books. This is an urban fantasy with romantic elements, and very limited moments of steam, it’s a great plot though and I’m sure fans of Sherrilyn Kenyon or urban fantasy in general will thoroughly enjoy this fast past adventure.