The Flame and the Blade by Meredith Hart [SPFBO]

The Blurb:

Lord Vethe Scarvian is a direct descendant of the man who almost destroyed humanity. And that plus a couple of coppers will buy him another mug of ale.

Vethe has no use for his once-noble family’s dubious legacy. When his aunt reveals the existence of a long-lost betrothal agreement hidden somewhere in the ruins of the Demon Forest, Vethe is only interested in how much money the noblewoman betrothed to him would be willing to pay to escape that contract.

He just has to find the contract first.

Lyria Guardia let her family down and got her heart broken. Gods help her, that will never happen again.

After a crushing betrayal by the man she’d built her life around, Lyria abandons her promising career with the Adventurer’s Guild and returns, humiliated and heartbroken, to the Guard’s Guild that her family has run for hundreds of years. Determined to regain her position and prove herself to her five brothers, Lyria is willing to accept any assignment.

Even if that means she has to drag some spoiled noble brat through the Demon Forest in search of a mysterious missing contract.

Jared’s Review

The title of this post is a bit of a spoiler, but it would only take the bare minimum of detection work to puzzle this one out: Meredith Hart’s The Flame and the Blade is my semi-finalist selection for this round of the SPFBO.

For those tracking the competition for the Vegas markets, you can stop there. For those interested in why this is such an enjoyable book, read on.

The Flame and the Blade follows the adventures of two entertainingly disastrous characters as they chase a red herring through the dark woods. Vethe is an (illegal) fire mage and the last scion of an impoverished noble house that can trace its roots all the way back to the proverbial Dark Lord. He drinks a lot and uses his powers disreputably. It is amazing what spice pyromancy can add if you’re a sex worker or an assassin, and Vethe does a bit of both. 

Lyria’s got a different sort of family situation. Her brothers, like her father before her, run the Guard’s Guild, a collection of hard-working mercenaries. Lyria, however, left for the rival Adventurer’s Guild, lured by offers of glory and – more importantly – the charms of its leader, Marcus. At the start of the book, she’s just returned from her first expedition, only to find Marcus in bed with another woman. Now she’s coming back to her family: jobless, heart-broken, and more than a little embarrassed.

After a bit of – highly amusing – character establishing. Vethe is recalled home to his family’s dilapidated estate by his terrifying aunt. She’s found evidence that, buried somewhere in a crumbling ruin, there may be some documents that could help the family. Financially-speaking. To assist Vethe on this mini-quest, she’s hired a talented guard from the Guild: enter Lyria.

The plot is thin. At least as far as The Flame and the Blade goes, it is a linear stomp through the woods in search of a MacGuffin, with random encounters and wandering monsters appearing along the way. The tension, needless to say, comes from Lyria and Vethe. First, will they kill one another? Second, will they bang? Third, if so, what next? The two characters come from radically different worlds – nobility and the working class; sorcery and sword. They also have different outlooks on life. Vethe has always known that his time is limited. Not only is magic inherently dangerous, but being a magic user is a capital crime. He’s accepted that his role in life to raise enough money to take care of his sister, and, aside from that, he might as well indulge himself in drink and hedonism. Lyria has a traditional, family-led view of the world – surrounded by loving siblings and their traditional, familial successes. Her rebellion has set her back; she threw away everything she knew on an intense crush, and is now trying to rebuild some sense of stability.

The adventure, such as it is, succeeds as it removes both characters from their worlds and sends them into someplace ‘else’. Someplace alien and different, but also someplace completely removed from other people. The scary dark woods are totally apart from civilisation – allowing them to re-evaluate themselves in a vacuum of society. Yes, there are demons, but demons don’t judge. (They just eat you.)

Also, they’re both extremely horny. So there’s that. 

The reader doesn’t see much of the world in The Flame and the Blade, and what we do see is largely conventional. There’s the big city and the dark wood, warrior guilds and wizard schools, forbidden magic and the legacy of the dark lord. The archetypes, like the plot, are there to support the characters. They make for easy entry and immediate understanding. There’s also a great deal of promise: the demons are undeniably unsettling; the elemental magic – and its consequences – is well-realised. The tropes help fuel the book, but they’re never used lazily. 

But, ultimately, although the seeds of epic adventure are sown, this book is a romance: its success or failure is predicated on the connection between the two central characters. And, without a doubt, that connection is great. There’s amazing banter and steamy sex, tension and passion, good humour and bad habits. They’re fully realised characters, and both immensely likeable. They’re not ‘flawed’ – a word now badly over-used in fantasy; they’re human. They’ve made bad choices for entirely understandable reasons, they’re trying (and occasionally failing) and imperfect. They’re good people that deserve nice things, and, in The Flame and the Blade, they just might find it.

This is a fun, sweet, and surprisingly thoughtful, book that does an excellent job of executing a great romance in a solid fantasy world. It emphasises what is most important – the characters and their connection – but not at the expense of the action, world-building, or creepy monsters. 

Why it is my semi-finalist pick

I was really pleased by the range of fantasy that I had in my six books. I was treated to a fantasy Western, a portal fantasy, a LitRPG, some grimdark, a world bible, and, of course, this – a romance. SPFBO should be, and sometimes even is, a chance to see the vastness and variety of the fantasy genre. 

Potentially, this set up an apples v. oranges style of conflict, with six books so different as to be incomparable. Although a risk, that turned out to not be a problem. The Flame and the Blade was simply head and shoulders above the others in this group. It is a lot of fun, with that fun coming from a pair of excellently-realised and immensely empathetic characters. It is also an excellent romance – full of spice and banter, good at leveraging the nuances of interpersonal tension without descending into melodrama. I read a lot of romance and a lot of fantasy, but find that most fantasy romances have a difficult time balancing the ‘needs’ of both categories. The Flame and the Blade is, I’m pleased to say, an exception.

It has now been over a month since I finished reading my six contestants. I only DNF one book, so five passed the most basic behavioural test (‘Could I even read it to the end?’). Of those five, I only bought the sequel(s) to one book – The Flame and the Blade. I’ve since plowed on and read the rest of the four book series. If a book gets me to binge-read, I clearly like it. To put forward any other book would be hypocritical, to say the least.

Romances, I’m sorry to say, have never done well in this particular competition. Previous winners have – rather noticeably – contained more sexual violence than consensual sex. There’s a much larger conversation to be had around the normalisation of torture and violence, while sex is deemed off-putting or unsettling. Fantasy romance is a massive part of the category – and commercially, far larger than grimdark. Whether or not The Flame and the Blade is to the taste of other SPFBO readers and judges, it most certainly belongs in the conversation of the competition’s best books.

To check out our other SPFBO 7 reviews and keep up to date on which books are still in the running, check out our SPFBO 7 Hub page here.