DNF Review: Cursed by Fire by Danielle AnnettCursed by Fire by Danielle Annett
Series: Blood & Magic #1
Genres: Dystopian, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 157
Format: eBook
Source: Advance Reader Copy, NetGalley
Goodreads
one-star

It has been six years since the Awakening and peace in Spokane, Washington is still tenuous at best. The vampires and shifters are all vying for control of the city and the humans seem to be the ones suffering the consequences, or so it seems.

Aria Naveed has spent the last two years of her life fighting to make the many wrongs of the world right, but soon finds out that the humans aren’t as weak as they appear and may be a more terrifying foe than any of the other races combined.

When a stranger rolls into town with trouble on his heels, Aria finds herself trapped in the middle of a battle that could cost her more than she has bargained for as a fight for justice turns into an unexpected fight for her life.

I’ve actually been dragging my feet on writing this review. I hate writing DNF and 1 star reviews. Hate it. Plus this is a self published book, and I absolutely LOVE when a self pub is a win!

Now, if you’ve read the blurb, you see that this book sounds like I would be all over it.

And I was, when I first read the blurb. This is being billed as a sort of If you like Kate Daniels, you’ll love this! Well, I love Kate Daniels, and I love a kickass heroine who can carry the book.

But…

It really is like Kate Daniels…EXACTLY like Kate Daniels, with some Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling tossed in, and maybe some Mercy by Patricia Briggs sprinkled on top. And the similarities are often, and there are too many to just be coincidental.

And when I took to twitter and goodreads, lo and behold, I’m not the only one who noticed.

For my review, I’m going to do a couple things I don’t normally do. I’m going to link to other reviews, and I’m going to post my status updates from Goodreads.

Status #1: “I’ve heard this is like Kate Daniels! I’m so excited!”

Status #2: “oh. oh no no no. This isn’t a book “like Kate Daniels.” This book is *exactly* like Kate Daniels. Is this what Ilona was talking about? Because it’s bad. Like super obvious.”

Status #3: “after flipping through the book, I see way too many similarities to Kate Daniels. This reads like one of those Kindle Worlds books where fan fic is allowed. I won’t be finishing this. I was so excited for this too 🙁
I literally bumped all other blog reads for this. #disappointed #rage”

Status #4: “I just can’t do read this anymore. It reads of Kate Daniels/Nalini Singh fan fic, and I’m not okay with that.”

A few weeks ago, I noticed Ilona Andrews saying that she and Gordon were looking into copyrighting some terms. There were more, but I’ll let you hunt them down on twitter if you want to see. Basically, they were aware of this book, and were very disappointed and angry that the author plagiarized them. Last I’d heard they’d sent in something to their publisher’s legal department.

Plagiarism is not just copy/pasting someone else’s words. Stealing terms that were unique to the Kate Daniels World is plagiarism. Lyc-V was the first one I noticed, you’ll see some familiar names as well. Stealing ideas is plagiarism.

Here are 2 reviews that are very detailed.

 Review 1

Review 2

I’m so disappointed. I really wanted to like this.

***ARC courtesy of the publisher via netgalley

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one-star