Immortal Fire

"3.5 stars - This series got better and better with each book. This was my favorite by far. This book continues with the story of the kamigakari Emi and yōkai Shiro/Inari as well as all of the rest of the kami, yōkai, and gods that we’ve gotten to know throughout the series.<br/><br/>Something I really enjoyed about this series is that it wasn’t wholly predictable. I may have guessed that some of the happy endings would come about, but I couldn’t guess how. Complete predictability is something I often find in YA books like this one so that was really refreshing.<br/><br/>This series is very action-packed. There are tons of epic, magical fight scenes between gods and dragons and flying nine-tailed foxes. This was something that actually sort of lost my interest because it was so many very long fight scenes, but if you’re into that, you’ll love this series.<br/><br/>My favorite aspect of this book is that it’s almost entirely set in magical and mystical realms and/or with mystical beings. Something that annoys me to no end is when a fantasy book has all of these incredible other worldly or mythological creatures/beings/settings in the book, but the author focuses mostly on the humans. Like WHO CARES ABOUT HUMANS WHEN I CAN READ ABOUT DRAGONS AND TENGU AND KAMI AND MAGIC?!?! So that puts this book much higher on my list, we get so much time with the mythological world even though the main character is human.<br/><br/>My biggest complaint with this book is simply the possessiveness=deepest love trope that is so common in books, particularly books where the male character has more power than the female. He says ‘you’re mine’ with a possessive grin and she swoons. It makes me roll my eyes and I think it’s a gross way to write love and that took away from the otherwise pretty sweet and very intentionally consensual relationship between Emi and Shiro (minus the thousands of years age gap which is always a bit iffy too)."