Incendiary: 10/26/20

Incendiary by Zoraida Córdova is the start of the Hollow Crown series. Renata Convida can take the memories from people through a simple, but painful touch. Her abilities led to the killing of thousands of her people and now as an adult she's out for revenge.

The plot — a quest to get close enough to the king to kill him — shares similarities with the Tiger at Midnight trilogy by Swati Teerdhala and the A Song of Wraiths & Ruin series by Roseanne A. Brown. All three of these series draw from regional histories and myths giving each a rich tapestry of world building and characters.

Where this book falls short is in how the memories Renata takes are represented. Rather than summarizing and internalizing what she's learned, each memory is rendered as an extended scene written out in italics. Some take a paragraph and some go on for pages. Even the shortest of memories is hard to read as a block of italics. To be honest, I skimmed or skipped most of the memories.

The next book is Illusionary. It releases on May 11, 2021.

Four stars

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