I'm not really sure where to start with this one. When you read pulps you know there's a 50/50 chance at best of hitting a winner or something remotely resembling a decent book - comes with the territory and I accept that (check out some of the books featured in this series of blog posts). Cheesy dialogue, non-existent plotting, unbelievable cookie cutter characters; these are all part and parcel of the mass produced paperback pulps. Flame, however, is something different.
Using the above mentioned deficiencies as a baseline, Flame easily falls below...it's that bad.
With a story seeped in sex (mostly non-consensual), racism, and indiscernible colloquialisms, it's a hard read all round. The dialogue really slows the story, not that there's much actually happening between sexual encounters of the most explicit and deranged kind (I'll refrain from providing details, the world's a better place with this largely left unknown to masses), I had to re-read multiple passage of dialogue to get the gist of the conversation - which in the end didn't really add all that much value to the story (I wont dare use the word 'plot' as there wasn't one) be honest.
The opening stanza showed potential but it was false advertising; an Amazon-like warrior in the midst of performing an ancient ritual is brutally cut down by a band of slavers hell bent on pillaging the isolated African tribe. Flame, despite her best attempts to fight off the invaders is captured, from that point forward the story takes to a weird form of erotica.
The verdict? don't pick up this pulp.
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