A Fire in the Sky by Sophie Jordan

Book Review

Sarah Deeming

Tamsyn is the royal whipping girl. An orphan, she was brought up with the princesses of Penterra, and she takes their punishment when they are unruly or misbehave. So when Fell, the Beast of the Borderlands, demands a princess as his wife as payment for keeping Penterra safe, the king and queen turn to Tamsyn to protect their daughters one final time. In an act of deceit, the king and queen trick Fell into marrying Tamsyn and consummating the marriage. To Tamsyn, however, this is her duty, her last act of protection for the girls she has been raised alongside as a sister, no matter how angry Fell is at the deception.

Tamsyn’s problems do not start there. There are no dragons in Penterra anymore. The Borderlanders have killed them. Witches are in exile, hiding from the Borderlanders who have been sent to hunt them. Her new life will be hard and dangerous. But out of the confines of the palace, Tamsyn flourishes, and maybe in these dangerous, wild lands, she will discover the secret of her heritage. A secret that could see her executed if her new husband ever finds out.

A Fire In The Sky is the first in a new romantasy series by Sophie Jordan. We start with a beating, Tamsyn being whipped because two of the three princesses who treat her as a sister were fighting over a hair ribbon. The scene introduces the reader to the unusual concept of a whipping girl. Someone raised closely with royal children to take their punishment in the hopes that it corrects their behaviour. Through Tamsyn’s eyes, we see that this position is both a vaunted one as she is treated like a princess, but also a despised one because she isn’t really a princess and doesn’t have the same future as her ‘sisters’. It’s a brilliant opener made all the more distasteful because the chamberlain who hands out the punishment gets off on his work. I immediately felt for her trapped in this gilded cage of abuse and manipulation.

We have three first-person points-of-view in this story; Tamsyn, Fell, and Stig, who is the captain of the guard and another romantic interest of Tamsyn’s. Her marriage to Fell causes much friction between Stig and his father, who hates Tamsyn and everything she represents, as well as straining the relationship between Penterra and the Borderlands, as Fell is very much an alpha male who doesn’t like other people touching his things, particularly his wife.

But before you start thinking this is just another love triangle romantasy with a threadbare plot giving the characters an excuse to get hot and heavy with each other, let me reassure you that is not the case. Penterra had a dragon problem, and the Borderlanders were responsible for destroying them. Supposedly, all the dragons are dead, and the witches are either burnt or in exile, no longer a threat to the kingdom, and the dragons’ wealth is redistributed throughout the kingdom and all its people. But outside the palace, Tamsyn starts uncovering the truth behind the history she was taught. There are many twists and turns and many secrets revealed, but they only lead to more questions with a cliffhanger ending.

I loved A Fire In The Sky and can’t wait for the next instalment. Even if the sex was taken out of this book, it would still be a great story with fantastic world-building, great pacing and a compelling plot. Highly recommended.