Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: The Firebird’s Tale
SERIES: The Ironlands #1
AUTHOR: Anya Ow
PUBLISHER: Less Than Three Press LLC
LENGTH: 296 Pages
RELEASE DATE: December 6, 2016
BLURB:
The Firebird’s Tale begins with the end of a familiar story: a Prince who never smiled, and by Imperial decree, has to marry the one who managed to make him do so.
Except that it was all an accident, and the Prince would say he didn’t actually smile at the thief who dared to rob a Tsar, and the thief was not even a woman—or, as it turns out, even human.
REVIEW:
“On Morenasaday, the Tsesarevich—famous in the Ironlands for never smiling—did so, and caused an instant uproar. Later he would protest in vain that he had not, in fact smiled; smiling involved a given amount of joy, or at least mirth, while what he had actually felt was a certain degree of schadenfreude. The Tsar had blithely ignored this opinion, since it had not suited him to like it.”
The Firebird’s Tale was one of those books that I picked up on a whim because the blurb sounded good. A prince smiles at a man and they have to get married. Quite the twist on the traditional fairy tales. The paragraph above is the first paragraph of the book, and I knew already I would have some pronunciation issues.
The story begins when Aleksei, the prince, spots a thief stealing his father the Tsar’s money purse. Aleksei smirks at the thief’s gall, and unfortunately the smile is seen. The Tsar had previously decreed that whomever could make his son smile, would be wed to the Prince. They didn’t really figure on a man named Nazar, who isn’t even a human, to be the one to cause that smile. Of course, no one knows at the time that Nazar is from Faerie.
The book goes on to detail the story of what happens to Aleksei and Nazar after the smile. The story is set in a place called ‘The Ironlands’, which is a world based partially on ancient Russia in my opinion, with the story borrowing heavily in parts from Russian Folklore and other Slavic Folklore, with lots of stories within the story. Those side stories ranged across the gamut of fairy tales. A couple examples would be Snow White and Rapunzel. I had no idea why they were where they were in the story, although in some cases the author seemed to try to tie them to the Ironland’s history, or even Aleksei’s family history. Those side stories just didn’t work for me and kept throwing me out of the current story line.
There are also references to Baba Yaga (the wicked witch of Russian folklore), who is thrown in as one of the side characters for this current installment. The end of the book lead me to believe maybe Baba Yaga will be a bigger character in upcoming sequels. I read another book last year that was also based heavily on Russian Folklore, so I was familiar with the Baba Yaga character. Some of the other characters from Folklore and Faerie though, not so much. As such, a lot of the names and words didn’t exactly flow easily through my mind. I’ll be honest, I think the story kind of suffered for it. Every time I’d be reading along and things would start flowing smoothly, I’d come to a word or Faerie being type that would throw me out of the story line yet again, when I stumbled over the pronunciation in my mind.
I think the story was well written and it was well edited. I’m going to keep it honest though and tell you that I personally struggled with the read. There was a lot going on, with a lot of words I couldn’t pronounce. More importantly, I never really got comfortable with the story as a whole. It seemed muddied in places, like I could almost grasp who some of the side characters were and how they fit together, and then it would shift focus and I wouldn’t be sure. I know that it is the first book in a series, so this book might have been more about set-up of the story line and characters, but it left me a little unsatisfied. I’m not sure that I would consider reading more in the story.
RATING: 
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