Flames by Robbie Arnott

          3.5 Stars

I think the kindest way to describe this short tale is quirky; I could have said pretentious but that feels overly harsh and is very much down to personal taste in matters of expression.  Although, sections of it did read in a very self-conscious manner as though the author was peaking through the lines saying "you see what I did here, you see how I am layering the metaphor, aren't I clever".  Maybe that's just my take on it, maybe you will relish the "richness of prose".

The story itself seems to take a good third of the book to become cohesive, it certainly took me that long to figure out what each of these disparate characters and settings had to do with each other.  Once the links are delineated I found myself quite enjoying the tale of the Old Gods of an Old Country still pushing through the changes that the "dark apes" and the "pale apes" (Robbie Arnott's descriptions not mine) were wreaking on their land, water courses and skies.  Although, I am still not really sure why so much time was spent on the hunting of Oneblood Tuna - yes I am aware it is referenced at the end but even so.

Strangely the only character I really felt any sort of connection through the page was was the God of the South Esk.  The people never really felt fully formed on the page and had just the one dimension to their characters and I could discern no real depth to them apart from their part in the tale.  There was also the rather peculiar segue into the world of the Private Detective and their reliance on the self-medication of gin and strange relationship with The Last Graham.

As a fantasy novel it works quite well.  The section on the wombat farm in Melaleuca was well described and the descent in to madness - or maybe possession - was evocative and absorbing.  The history of Charlotte and Levi's parents also gripped me, even though I had figured out by now who daddy not-so-dear was.

I am not entirely sure that this is a book I could recommend though, I would certainly need to know the reader's tastes before I could do so.  If you can struggle past the sometimes obscuring prose the tale itself is actually very good, it just depends if you feel it is worth the effort to power through.  I did and, on the whole, I don't regret it but it is a very short book and only took me an afternoon so that did help.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW