Review: Firestarter

Firestarter by Tara Sim
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tara Sim's first trilogy comes to a close, and as she promised for months before its release, it's a hell of an attack on all our feels. The biggest book of the trilogy in all the ways, Firestarter finally launches into a truly twisted endgame of forces fighting all across the world, from England to India and tons of points in between, for dominance over time - and that's even before the old gods themselves have their say.


For months, my biggest complaint about Timekeeper and Chainbreaker was that I felt the magic system - especially the way the clock towers and clock spirits worked - was kept too vague. Not so much here, and I think Sim may have taken such complaints to heart in such a way to make readers really want to be careful what they wished for. We get into some gross detail about how the clocks are formed - and dear God, that's just sick to read, especially since of course we learn about it through Colton's eyes. Not to mention the even more sickening ways the book's villains intend to ramp up the making of clock spirits for, um, indestructibility.

It's another long book - this time passing over the 500-page mark - and, at times, a little tough to follow the multiple storylines jostling for dominance within each chapter. But undeniably, this is exactly the emotional horror show that Sim promised us. I mean, this is the kind of book where our m/m lovers have what I'm pretty sure is their first sexual encounter, and then Colton can't stop thinking about the boy he left behind, and he and Danny start fighting about it. Talk about dichotomy, eh?

I'll say this much, though: the ending is devastating, until it's not, in a way reminding me of one of my all-time favorite trilogies. I won't say which one, other than it's got a primary-color-themed cover style not unlike that used by this series, with the primary colors appearing in the same order.

To Timekeeper, Chainbreaker, and Firestarter, I now say ave atque vale and eagerly await Sim's next series starter, Scavenge the Stars. Wish we didn't have to wait almost another year for that, but what a lovely cover reveal we just got, no?

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