“Trust is an illusion in this city. Our hatreds
run too deep.”
With Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte is a modern young adult fantasy set
in a medieval Italian town. It’s got magic, very strange relationships,
political intrigue, and tons of twists and turns.
The book opens with Lilly, who lives with her father after
her mother killed herself a few years before. From the first page, we see Lilly
refer to her parents by their first names, Jack and Carly, not mum and dad. It shows
the clear distance that has built up between them over the years.
Lilly tells the reader how her relationship with her mother
was never a good one and how she felt like her mother didn’t want her. She also
says her father was a different man before Carly’s death him hard.
With Fire in Their Blood is narrated in Lilly’s first-person perspective so we
see everything through her eyes. There are no other narrators in the book. Despite
that, the reader can clearly see Lilly’s misgivings and naivety even if she can’t.
“The more I thought about this city, the
more unsettling it became.”
Now Jack is more of a zombie, who decides to take Lilly to a
distant off-the-beaten track town in Italy called Castello, claiming a new
start.
But Castello…Castello is literally a beast of a town. Medieval
looking. It catches your breath the moment you lay eyes on it. But then… you discover
that it’s not what it seems.
Castello is a town that has been ravaged by warring clans for
centuries. Now a man – only referred to as The General – controls the city and
has divided the clans, the Marconis and the Paradisos.
Lilly finds herself on the Marconi side, which is like the
poor side of the city. Mingling with the Paradisos is forbidden except for one
day of the year.
This distinguishing reminded of Utopia, a dark
post-apocalyptic Arabic novel by renowned Egyptian author Ahmed Khalid Tawfik.
While the books’ premises and settings are worlds apart, the idea of a country (or
town) divided into poor and rich is the common factor.
In Castello, the Saints are evil. Bad people with magical abilities.
But reportedly all dead.
When I picked up With Fire in Their Blood, I wasn’t
sure what to expect. What I was definitely not prepared for was the political
intrigue Kat Delacorte had penned in this book. If there’s anything I loved above
all else in this book, it’s the political intrigue.
It’s relatable (no I won’t elaborate) and done really well. It
reminded me of the tactics used by the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
While the stories are entirely different, the methodology is the same. (If you
haven’t read Animal Farm, then go pick it up now!)
Like many army-led political regimes, we see how The General
has ingrained certain beliefs in people’s heads. Slowly, Lilly learns who the Saints
were and what they did. How the last war started and how The General came to
power.
“The Saints were the children of hell.
Born blighted and unnatural with fire in their blood. Stained dark by sorcery
and loathsome in the eyes of the light.”
And like any army-backed regime, The General emerged with his
Enforcers who ensure that there are no Saints and that no one breaks The General’s
law.
Though With Fire in Their Blood wins in imagery,
foreshadowing, and political intrigue, it isn’t successful with
characterization. I honestly couldn’t like Lilly. I tried but I couldn’t.
While there are many characters in With Fire in Their
Blood but there aren’t any likable ones. And that put me off a bit. I didn’t
hate Lilly but I didn’t like her either.
“The girl staring back at me was pale
and shadowed, her dark hair a tangling mess. Something feral about her,
difficult to tame. I was glad of that, because it hid how brittle I felt on the
inside. Like there was another girl, a scared, lost one, locked below my ribcage,
threatening to claw her way to the surface if I didn’t watch out.”
What I did like is that Delacorte created a truly broken main
character. As a reader, I don’t see that often in books.
But Lilly isn’t the only broken character. Like the town of
Castello, everyone is broken – in a way. I think this brokenness – along with Castello’s
regime – has made the characters too shallow.
Another thing I disliked about Lilly is how she literally
falls for half of the characters in the book! It was annoying. While I realize
she’s 16 and discovering herself and sexuality, I felt it was too much. If
it breathes, she’ll fall in love with him/her/it. For me it was forced. Kind of
like when Netflix wants to force down certain ideas in its productions.
Another thing that stood out for me – not in a good way – was that some scenes weren’t logical to me. The trial was one of them.
On another note, something I hadn’t realized it before, but while
writing this review, I noticed that Delacorte added lots of imagery and
foreshadowing in the early chapters. Foreshadowing always gets extra points from
me.
“After the dreams, I’d feel jittery and
unsettled all day, my skin hot, my headache building behind my temples. It was
as if there was a storm brewing inside me – like my body was rebelling against
the town.”
I must say I found the book cover quite pretty and dark at the
same time.
Overall, I found With Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte
an interesting and fairly fast-paced read with interesting political intrigue
and imagery. The characters needed more work but it was a good read.
Overall rating for With Fire in Their Blood by Kat
Delacorte: 3.5 stars
Note: I received a free copy of With
Fire in Their Blood by Kat Delacorte as part of The Write Reads blog tour.
More images to come here and on Instagram
