Not quite my normal read. More sci-fi than fantasy. Zombies. Ghouls. On a mission to find a missing person. Only 180 pages so a short read.

I think this book is fine for a YA audience. I will be DNF for lack of interest in the story. I think the writing is maybe a little too short and rushed at the beginning not really giving me much of a relationship with the characters.

The Black Fire Concerto is an intense, gory-filled nightmare that is relentless in its pace right up until the final pages.

The blurb promised horror and gore and it definitely delivered on that front. The world of The Black Fire Concerto is a dark, post-apocalyptic landscape and as a reader you fear for its main characters every step of the way. The cast of characters were great, especially Reneer as the sarcastic comic relief when things seemed dire. The world-building is interesting, and it's clear that Mike Allen put a lot of thought and work into it, especially when coming up with the macabre 'monsters' and contraptions that litter the story.

I did find the constant descriptive gore to be just a tad too much, to the point where it was taking away from everything else that was happening and lost itself by being overly descriptive.

Recommended for anyone looking for a fast-paced, gruesome, quick read.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley*

🎶🖤💀The Black Fire Concerto💀🖤🎶

*****Read as an ARC*****

3.25⭐️


The Black Fire Concerto was a macabre, experiential story of  an unforgiving nightmare world. The horrific imagery Allen spills across the page paints a vividly gruesome picture consistently and thoroughly, immersing the reader into each haunting scene. You follow a young musician,  Erzelle, and Olyssa, a formidable warrior, as they journey through this ravaged world to find Olyssa's sister. 


The entire book reads like running through a waking nightmare, feeling surreal but also disordered. Depending on how you approach the story, this is either engaging and immersive or wildly disconcerting and inconsistent.


Pros:

The imagery of the story is insane - Allen does an incredible job painting every gruesome scene in tantalizingly terrifying detail. I can smell the rotting flesh, hear the piercing screeches, and vividly imagine the peeling flesh sloughing from the ghouls. 

- Interesting and unique magic system in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world


Could be Pro or Con, depending on your taste:

This is a dark, body horror, nightmare fantasy. There's dark magic, cannibalism, cultists, heavy violence, and gore.

Allen tells the story in a way that truly feels like a dream. But you know how crazy things happen in your dreams that make total sense in the trenches of the dream itself, but when you wake up and think back on it, it seems disjointed and doesn't really make sense? This book kind of gave me the same feelings. In that sense, if it's thought about as an intentional choice to immerse the reader in this unrelenting nightmare, then *bravo* because it really felt so much like a dream. However, if you just approach it as a story, I felt the scenes and character choices oftentimes don't flow well or correlate with the established lore (more below)


Cons:

- I felt there wasn't enough character establishment/development. The plot/world is beautifully laid out, but at the expense of the characters who feel more like props than integral parts of the story until over halfway through the book.

- the characters sometimes just... do things. Sometimes their actions make sense to the story, but how the character arrived at that action is not nearly fleshed out enough (yes, that's a pun) to make sense based on what we know of the character. 

-  Pacing is just a little off - jumping around too quickly without enough explanation


Personal note/preference:

I believe Erzelle was too young. While primarily a preference (because it makes me sick to think of a child going through everything she experiences), I also believe her mindset/processing was not in line with that of a twelve-year-old girl.


Overall, if you enjoy lyrical horror and mostly appreciate detailed imagery/world building, I'd absolutely suggest giving this a try! But if you're a reader mostly focused on characters or cohesive storytelling, I'd challenge you to reframe the story into that of a nightmare retelling, or this may not be the book for you 💀🖤🎶

The Black Fire Concerto by Mike Allen is such a good book. I couldn't stop reading this book for a bit... the storyline was immaculate, the characters were perfect! I totally recommend everyone to read this book as fast as they can.