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I know 2 things:

1. This Romantasy is going to blow up when it comes out
2. I did not like it one bit

Now that we both know these two things, let’s proceed with caution shall we? This is a story about a witch blessed with emphatic magic to feel and control the emotions of others. She is captured by an infamous Roman general who is immediately captivated by her and makes her his body slave. In this world the Roman Empire is obviously corrupt and lots of people are actually dragons. The general (love interest) is keeping secrets and is probably not as evil as his reputation would have you believe.

Before I unleash my inner rath let me say 2 nice things. Firstly I appreciated that the Malina wasn’t just a snarky stabby rinse and repeat FMC. She’s definitely snippy but I wouldn’t quite put her into the 100% insufferable category. Secondly I liked that the author picked Ancient Rome as her setting inspiration because finallyyyy the girlies get to have their romance empire moment. Nice!

Now for�� everything else.

At the end of the day I don’t think I was ever going to jive with a colonizer/slave master x slave romance. For this story to even remotely work it would have to be handled with such nuance. Firebird doesn’t have that. The power imbalance between them was so icky that I found myself closing my eyes in dread at scenes leading up to intimacy because I was like “no pleaseee don’t do anything until you both are actual equals.�� That’s just not a pleasant way to experience romantic progression.

This issue was also exacerbated by the fact that the love interest Julianus is a dragon. The dragon within him (and also just straight up the man) often says things like “you are mine�� “tell me you’re giving yourself to me�� “my treasure�� “say you are mine�� etc. I understand these are romantasy cash lines and while I’m not even a big fan of them in the base case, given the context, they were so uncomfortable to read. I’ll also say that since this is a romance you know the love interest is going to be redeemed and has his reasons etc etc. but I just didn’t buy it? I don’t care why he conquered and murdered all her people, I care that he did it in the first place.

Let’s move on from the romance. Let’s talk about world building/ setting. This is a Romantasy pitched as From Blood & Ash meets House of the Dragon. Unfortunately the only similarity between Cross’s Roman inspired setting to George R.R. Martin’s Westeros (besides the existence of dragons) was gratuitous violence towards woman. If you are hoping this story will have complex political maneuvering and characters with depth, look elsewhere. The politics is so surface level I couldn’t even submerge my pinky in it. Plus the presence of dragons just felt like an excuse for insta love, mating bonds, and “inexplicable connections�� between two people to exist.

Humor me, let’s come back to the romance itself for a second. APART from the ickiness in the context between them, the actual interactions between Malina and Julianus made me feel nothing. Their dynamic was just canned romantasy lines, attraction without substance, and cringe spicy scenes. I know that’s pretty subjective but words like nub, quim, and cunny were present. No thank uuu

Alright wrapping up this rant. I’ll admit I read this book up until the 60-70% mark before I truly started skimming it. That is LATE in the game for a dnf and skim. I stuck with it for that long only because I was genuinely curious how the author was going to navigate the power imbalance between them romantically, not because I cared about the characters, the romance, or the world stakes.

I leave you with a quote from early on, when our guy Julianus turns into a dragon on site when he sees his girl being attacked:

“Treasure. Slicing into the world, I roar. The gray half-man shakes with fear. As he should. He is no dragon. Nor man. He is a vile creature who planned to defile my treasure. He must bleed. He must die.��

Literally: rawr XD