"You cannot stand astride the line between 
 good and evil, life and death, for long. It will destroy you." 
 FLAMECASTER is the first book I've read from Cinda Williams Chima. Although I've heard that you don't need to read her previous books to understand the spinoff, I feel like there is a lot I didn't fully appreciate. While I can't deny Chima is a good storyteller, I had issues with this one. 
 What is time? 
 The book starts off with the characters being around thirteen years old. This was a good way to provide backstory but I felt like I couldn't relate to them, and that feeling carried on as they aged. When they begin to get into adult situations as they grew older, it just felt a bit weird because I still saw them as kids. Which brings me to... 
 All the random time skips! What the heck, I'd be reading one POV and then switch to another where they say "It had been two months since..." Where is the timeline here? This feels more convolvuted than the X-Men timeline. 
 You might need to read the manual. 
 (There is no manual, but there should be.) 
 I thought there were too many POVs near the beginning. Who are these people? Why are they relevant? I thought this was a book about two heroes. As time went on, I did grow to like the other POVs but as the book went on, they fizzled out. It was almost as if they were almost forgotten about. One "main" character barely even had a part! 
 A well-developed fantasy world is a good thing. Except when you are thrown into the well-developed fantasy world without knowing much. There were a lot of terms I didn't know and I felt like I was missing a lot of backstory since I didn't read the other books. Which actually reminds me, I still have questions about some things. 
 Setup, setup, and more setup. 
 I recognize that this is the first book in a series but I expected a bit more from it. Not much really happened, although there is major potential. Things didn't even really kick up in this one until the last hundred pages. 
 Readability Points 
 All that being said, I clearly finished and liked the book. The pacing and potential in FLAMECASTER saved it. Never once was I bored or tired of the world. Chima's writing really sucks you in and keeps your attention. 
 "Love is the root of so much suffering and misery, so much loss. 
 It's the worst thing in the world, to risk yourself by loving someone." 
 Insta-Love: A Case Study 
 Has there been or will there ever be a book that gives as good of an example of insta-love as this one? Probably not. Needless to say, I didn't buy this couple at all. For a five-hundred page book, you are going to have to work a bit harder on the development. After all, you had five-hundred pages.