Fire

The story, Fire, is a companion novel to the book Graceling by Kristin Cashore. It’s called a companion novel rather than a sequel because it is not a continuation of the story in Graceling. The story takes place in a land bordering the one in Graceling and there is only one character that carries over. The events in Fire take place before the events in Graceling.

In a place known as The Dells there exist things called monsters that are much like regular animals except that they are unnaturally bright, vivid colors and they can alter your thoughts. Imagine a fushia leopard that can convince you that you want to be its lunch! Fire is the name of a girl who is part human, part monster. Her mother was a human and her father was a monster human. Fire is the only human monster left in The Dells. Ordinary humans are entranced by her beauty. She was named for her hair which includes all the colors of a beautiful fiery sunset. Contrary to what you would think, life is not easy for Fire. Her beauty inspires strong feelings in others. Some love her so much they want to possess her completely. Some hate her so much they want to kill her on sight. She often has to use her mental powers to turn people’s attention away from her, and even then she still faces daily dangers from angry humans and monsters who hunt her as if she was a rare delicacy.

The bulk of the story’s action begins when Fire goes to King’s City to help King Nash and his siblings interrogate people who may have information about a threatened uprising against the king. Even though she is capable Fire refuses to use her mental powers to torture or force the people being questioned tell what they know. She will only help the King’s inquisitors know if people are telling the truth or not. But Fire becomes more and more involved in the lives of the royal family, particularly with the mysterious Prince Brigan, commander of the king’s army. During her stay in King’s City Fire learns much about herself, her family’s history, and her own connection to the royal family.

This book took me quite a while to read, which usually means that I was not interested enough to read it voraciously. If I am truly intrigued with a book, I pick it up every chance I get. It was not that way with Fire. I could have abandoned this book, but I was interested enough to want to know how the story ended. So I plodded through. I don’t think I will be reading anything else by this author. The stories are based on some very creative, unique ideas, but they seem unnecessarily dark to me. I am a big fan of the Harry Potter and Twilight series, so I’m not opposed to slightly dark stories, but Fire and Graceling seemed to me to be dark just for the sake of being dark. Or maybe I should say that the plot wasn’t strong enough to distract me from the darkness. I mean, I like Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series, and those are incredibly dark, but in that case I’m so caught up in the story that it doesn’t bother me so much.

The other thing that bothered me about Fire was that I read it knowing it was intended for teens. I believe the subject of sex was too casually discussed in the novel. The main character is a teenager, and yet her outlook on sex is more like that of a character from Grey’s Anatomy. Don’t get me wrong, the sexual encounters are never described graphically. It’s really just the characters’ attitudes toward sex that bothered me. As a teacher, I would not recommend this book to my students. I find it a little inappropriate for any teen who is not very mature, and it just wasn’t that good. I would recommend to parents that they read this book along with their teen if their teen does decide to read it. If it were my child I would want to be able to discuss some of the issues with them. I’m glad to be done with this book and on to happier, lighter fare. Eat, Pray, Love is up next on my list. Goodbye dark fantasy. Hello enlightening memoir!