I really, really like long doujinshi series, so I appreciate Tracks of Flame for not being the usual 20 page affair that most doujinshis are; it gives readers the chance to delve into the story and characters more than usual.

However, this one really didn't meet expectations for a number of reasons. Despite being 86 pages long, the first story, Escape (which covered the first two volumes of the series) felt a lot like a 20 page doujinshi. This story begins with the idea that Roy and Ed are desperately in love with one another--"I don't need anyone else as long as I have you; you are my everything" type of thing. So unless you ship this pair blindly, this is a somewhat problematic attitude for these two to take as it bumps people like Al, Winry, and Lt. Hawkeye out of the loop. All the tragic events that happen in the story afterwards (and there are lots of them) are based off the premise that Roy and Ed are desperately in love. If you're immediately willing to believe that these two could ever possibly feel that way for one another, you'll probably be bawling like a baby by the end. If you need a little more convincing, the rest of the story will have you rolling your eyes. Personally, I easily like this pairing the best out of all FMA pairings, but even still, since they hardly have a close relationship in the manga, I need some sort of hint, at least, for how/why they came together. Circumstances prevent them from talking together all that much in Escape, so we never really find out much about how they work as a couple, which also added to some of my apathy over their fate. The third and final volume, "Canary" ends up telling a different story than the first two volumes. Canary actually shows Roy and Ed interacting much more than they did in Escape, so I liked it a lot more than that one, but overall, I thought the whole doujinshi was kind of "meh."

So if you are an absolutely died-in-the-wool shipper of RoyxEd / EdxRoy, you will probably love this, especially if you like a lot of melodrama and tragedy. If you don't fall into one of those two categories, I wouldn't bother with it.