Customer Reviews

Child of Flame

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is by far the best of Ms. Elliott's present series. There have been so many characters and subplots so far that it's been hard to really make an emotional attachment to any one, even Liath. However this book finally starts drawing things together in a cohesive manner. I think that one of Ms. Elliott's main problems is that she gets too caught up in her own subplots and loses her grasp on the main story, which seems to me to be what happened with her Jaran series. Although Jaran was a masterpiece, in my opinion, the other books lacked focus and sprawled out of control. But Child of Flame, as far reaching as it is, actually gains focus. I almost didn't read the book as I was disappointed with the others; I'm glad I did.

Once again I have several criticisms to make but can pass on only good recommendations in the end. Kate Elliott's talent sometimes tends to outrun her planning and I think it has been detrimental to this series that it has sprawled so widely beyond the bounds of the 2 trilogies it was originally intended as. Already we have 4 books, and at least two more to come, with the series structure already rendered obsolete by the sheer breadth of material that Elliott covers. This is not to say that there isn't internal consistency of structure because this novel is structured beautifully around Liath's ascent into the spheres. The travails which every other character goes through echo Liath's symbolic battling with Desire, False Obligation, Greed and the other motifs which are characterised by the Seven Stars by which the maleficus walks the spheres.

My frustration could just be because she let so few revelations slip in this huge novel, as in THE BURNING STONE. When the action started hotting up with about 150 pages to go I couldn't suppress my irritation that more details weren't released. But still, I have to marvel at the way that Elliott managed to trick us into thinking certain things (i.e. about Liath's parentage and royal descent, about Alain's descent, about the ghosts of the elves that periodically encounter Liath, Hanna and Alain, the exile of the Aoi, even Liath's troubled realtionships with the men in her life!) which may not necessarily have been true and how so few clues manages to keep me thinking almost solely about this book two days after I finished it!

If you are feeling a bit lost in this novel due to the range of new characters and settings introduced in this novel, hang in there because the tie-ins at the end make it all the worth the while. And beyond that, even though we sometimes meet new characters in this novel at the expense of any mention of other older characters e.g. Tallia, the new characters are endlessly endearing - I swear if you don't love Adica then you don't have a heart!

I also wanted to say how amazing Kate Elliott is at painting an incredibly poignant picture of human desire - there were a number of chapters in this novel where I felt so achingly involved with the love/lust that the characters bore each other I felt I could reach out and touch them. It's like the scene in Elliott's JARAN (highly recommended!!) where Tess and Baktiaan are at the Temple and he begins singing her the song the Fedya wrote for her. Ican still *hear* his voice and *see* his face when they are riding up the Avenue. The chapters which I felt this most strongly in in CHILD OF FLAME were when Sanglant sees Liath in Gent, when Sanglant meets with Helmut Villam's daughter Waltharia and when Liath sees Hugh in Darre. Amazing scenes I had to read again for their power to capture the human heart and its expressions.

Kate Elliot is a wonderful writer. She creats amazing characters and pulls them all into an intricate series of plots and subplots.

In Child of Flame Kate Elliot carries the reader along with Alain and Liath as they discover who they are and their places in the world. Kate Elliot loves to lead readers through mysteries. Alain and Liath's heritage are mysteries that she gets closer to solving in this outstanding book. Even though you get frustrated with not knowing what is within these characters, it just spurs you on to want to find out and get to the end of the book as fast as possible. Liaths birth circumstances are very interesting and surprising and the emotion at the time is very intense. While Alain's mystery still isn't solved, Kate Elliot has come closer to revealing what he really is.

While Alain and Liath are the main characters, there are still other well developed characters such as Sanglant and King Henry. Liath and Sanglant's daughter, Blessing, surprised me with her developing character and even if her growing up so fast seems strange, it excites me to see her take a part in the book.

In Child of Flame Kate Elliot brings you to the world of the Aoi, who are not what I expected them to be. They are brought a little more into the action, even though they don't yet take an active part outside of their own little world, besides teaching Liath a little of her magic. They are a divided people, some wanting to make peace and others just wanting to destroy.

Even though this book was close to 1000 pages, every page was worth reading and I don't think there are any wasted pages. Every page brings you closer to the mysteries that we all want to solve.

I recommend this book to anybody, because it is one of those books that draw people in to really care about what happens in the story. I would also recommend reading the first books in the series first, so your caught up on all thats going on.

I would read this book again and again, but i have other books scheduled to read so i'll get to it.

The fourth book in Kate Elliott's ambitious Crown of Stars series is Child of Flame. Originally, Ms. Elliott had planned to do a trilogy, but as she herself admits, the plot quickly outgrew three books. In this book, Alain, the foundling who is seeking the truth of his heritage, is pulled into a struggle for power between his own kind and their worst enemy, the Cursed Ones. This struggle has existed for aeons. The other adventurers in the Crown of Stars books, Liath and Sanglant, and the exiled king, have their own business to mind, but this is Alain's book. The reader will feel every heartache and every pain as Alain searches for answers to questions he in some cases does not even know to ask.

Kate Elliott's world of Crown of Stars owes a lot to her grounding in medieval history. Her stories are like a rich tapestry, meant to envelop the reader.

Rickey R. Mallory

It is just not possible to say enough good things about this series. Child of Flame is incredible, and it deprived me of sleep because I could NOT put it down before 3:00 a.m. for three nights in a row! Actually all the books in the Crown of Stars series should come with warning labels, something like: The Surgeon General has determined that this book will cause you to forget to eat and sleep and may prove hazardous to your health. Seriously, Child of Flame brings forth staggering new revelations about the Aoi and about Liath's parentage. Alain finds himself thrown back in time to when the Aoi were still present on earth, Liath finally comes into her power and gets over her tendency to react to danger by running away, and my favorite character, Sanglant, shines very bright as he fights the Quman barbarians for the heartlands of Wendar, with no support from the absent king Henry who has fallen, alas, into bad company. Several subplots from previous novels that I feared might be going nowhere tie back into the main plot in surprising ways, and there are unpredictable plot twists galore. At the end I had to go back and reread the beginning, because my take on what was happening had changed so completely! My only reservation about this series is that I may perish from the suspense by the time the last (sixth) book comes out.

"Child of Flame" is an excellent novel. We're taken in directions and into situations that are nothing like anything that's come before, yet fit their places and fulfill their roles with classic Elliott perfection. This alone adds a measure of excitement to the story. Add to that that "Child of Flame" is also the fastest paced and none of the others can touch it as far as being a pure gripping read. As for quality, I still pick "King's Dragon" as number one in the series, but it's also one of my all-time favorite books, so I have some bias, there.

Here are my gripes. Kate too often falls back on cliches; such as, she uses "fast and furious" repeatedly. Other phrases are repeated in reference to the same object over a very short span. There's also a problem with some run on exposition, but not to the degree that "Burning Stone" suffers.

Narrative voice is inconsistent, but this isn't completely bad, since I thought the stand in narrator was awesome. A larger problem is the sub-plot involving Hugh. It's well written, no doubt about that, but it's also become an item void of suspense; monotonous. We know from the outset that no matter what Hugh does, he will come out of it smelling, not like a rose, but like an entire field full of them.

Are the problems I mentioned above nothing but my own green-eyed monster's triumphal cheering over Kate's showing her mortality. I sit here indignantly shouting, "No!", and how very untrusting of you to doubt my motives. The goddess has a human side. Even she is subject to the occasional flub. The rest of us should be so imperfect.

"Child of Flame" is Kate Elliott's latest book in her series, Crown of Stars. It is mostly constrated on Alain and Liath who complete their mystical journeys of self-discovery. Also, this book sheds a little light on whereabouts of the rest of the cast. While Kate Elliott concentrates on developing main characters, the puzzling questions that linger after the last 3 books remain. This book is true to Kate's style; unexpected twists and turns will make you hate characters you liked just a moment ago and vice versa. However, Hugh and Anne remain the true villains of the story. Hopefully, the finale will soon follow.

I thoroughly enjoyed "King's Dragon" and "Prince of Dogs" and was reasonably entertained by "The Burning Stone." I found reading "Child of Flame" a chore. Why?

As in previous books, in "Child of Flame" Kate Elliott follows the adventures of at least six major characters: Alain, Liath, Prince Sanglant, Rosvita (and through her, the court of King Henry), Stronghand, and the Eagle, Hanna. In this volume, their paths diverge and we find ourselves reading six different stories, with little or no interaction between these major characters. Two of them, in fact (Alain and Liath) are not even in the same space-time continuum as the other four, with a resulting drop in my interest in their adventures. This is a serious problem because Alain's experiences account for 31% of the text and Liath's even less interesting journey takes up another 14%. That's almost half of the book that I found mildly interesting, at best.

Stronghand is one of Elliott's most original and intriguing characters, but his adventures are so sparsely documented that they barely qualify as a separate strand in the novel. However, although they only amount to 3% of the story, they do occur completely independently of the other five strands, qualifying them for independent status. Independent and fascinating: I wanted to read more about Stronghand and his evolving culture.

The other three stories, firmly grounded in the world Kate Elliott established in the first three books, were more engaging than Liath's and Alain's, interesting enough to keep me slogging through their detours away from the main story. However, every single story (except Stronghand's) involves a lengthy journey. No one stays put. One journey, or perhaps two, might be interesting, but five get tiresome. Furthermore, much of the suspense George R.R. Martin generates is missing from Ms. Elliott's work; it is clear that, unlike Mr. Martin, Ms. Elliott is not going to increase the tension by sacrificing a major character.

Will I read Books #5 and #6? Only if I feel reasonably sure the major characters will interact and that the text will consist of more than a series of loosely-strung-together episodes.

Kate Elliott is a darn good writer. I particularly liked her "Jaran" series, and I liked the first couple of books in this series pretty well. The trouble is that the series has developed like a carcinoma, and has multiplied _way_ out of control. Not only are there too many narrative threads to keep track of--there are too many threads to care about. The prose goes ever on and on.

I've resigned myself to the truth that in today's world, everyone must write series. OK. Though I long for the days of the tightly written stand-alone novel, I can handle trilogies. I'll even put up with the occasional quadrology. But when the books spew forth in numbers greater than the fingers of one hand, and grow to the size (and weight) of cinder blocks, I want to cry out, "Stop! Please! Size isn't _everything_!"

Since I hold you responsible for what is happening here, I'm going to address Kate's editor: please stop telling her to write as many words as possible, and get her to concentrate a bit on the quality of the prose and keeping the narrative manageable. OK? Please? Use the blue pencil and cross out some lines today. I can't read any more of this stuff.

Artfully planned, every element of the story contributes seamlessly to the essence of medieval fantasy. The delicate detail Ms Elliot pays to the ingredients of that imaginary world complements her evidently thorough knowledge of this particular genre.

Amidst the fresh, original plot, it is her characters that stand out the most; it is ultimately they who bind the reader to their world of Wendar, Varre and now, the great beyond. Characters so different give varied narratives of the intricacies they experience, making each character, even the evil faction, an endearment to the reader's heart. From gentle Alain to brilliant Liath, readers must be prepared to become even more tightly bound to thier every desire and every pain.

What I personally feel is another noteworthy feature in the novel is the manner in which Wendar's society is stuctured. The church as a major institution is an interesting perspective, especially since this is somewhat rare in most other fantasy novels. Furthermore, it is pleasingly refreshing to read of a nation that certainly does not incorporate the male domination in many other fantasy books.

The latest addition to the Crown of Stars series would certainly keep readers up long after their bed time. Be assured that the many twists in the plot would not allow impressions and expectations to stagnate. An enthralling read.