Customer Reviews

Fire (Graceling)

5 star:		(117)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Fire is an outcast in her society, her vibrant and unnatural hair color an indicator of her monster status and her dangerous powers of mind control. She's the only one left of her kind, and she resides far out in the country where she is safe from those who fear her and would harm her.

Meanwhile, King Nash is struggling to hold on to his kingdom as enemies from the north and south threaten to overthrow him. Both Nash and his brother Brigan distrust Fire for the havoc her father wreaked on the kingdom before his death, and Brigan would like nothing more than for Fire to be killed. But now, unless they find a way to resolve their differences and work together, they'll never win the impending war.

In this prequel to Graceling, Kristin Cashore has woven an intricate and brilliant tale that reveals a whole new world beyond Katsa's seven lands, full of fantastic creatures, strange powers, and a land teeming with political tension. For the most part, the characters in Fire are made more mature than Graceling's protagonists by the complexities of their past. Fire is a strong heroine, tough and fiercely independent, but loyal and kind through and through. She is genuinely thoughtful, and her concern for others stands out, especially as she struggles to reconcile her own nature and her father's actions with who she wishes to be.

The beginning of the book is slightly slow, but in no time at all it speeds up as Fire is launched out of her comfortable world and into an unknown and dangerous one. Cashore's plot is wonderfully complex and elaborate, but tight and solid. Fire also deals with many emotions--guilt, regret, fear, love, and empathy--in a very affecting way. Cashore is a master at using all of these elements to create a suspenseful, surprising, and totally engaging read. Though Fire is not a happy, warm book all of the time--it deals with death and violence and life's cruelties, but in a sensitive and optimistic manner, it has its moments of humor and romance. Cashore's talent for pulling off such an epic and engrossing read makes her one of the best YA fantasy writers since Tamora Pierce first introduced her character Alanna to the world. If readers weren't already in love with Cashore after reading Graceling, they will be after reading Fire.

Gosh, FIRE is a fantastic. Before I read it, I would have insisted that anyone who thought FIRE was better than GRACELING had to be crazy, because how do you improve on perfection? So instead I will say that FIRE is equally good, while being a very different book.

FIRE takes place in the same world as GRACELING, but there is little crossover. It's a prequel, set at least a decade before GRACELING, and only one character appears in both books. The two can be read in any order.

The story takes place in the Dells, where there are monsters but no gracelings. Monster horses, monster mice, monster leopards, monster versions of every species - including people. The monsters are identified by their vivid coloring - "A dappled grey horse in the Dells was a horse. A sunset orange horse was a monster." - and they are so beautiful that onlookers, mesmerized, simply offer themselves up as prey. Mesmerizing beauty is a dangerous enough quality in a predatory animal - in a monster person, it is inevitably wedded to powers of mind control. Two years before FIRE begins, the Dells were nearly destroyed by a monster human, Cansrel, who used his political influence to bring the country to the brink of war.

Fire, the heroine, is Cansrel's daughter. The only living monster human in the Dells, at seventeen she is burdened by a terrible fear that she is evil like her father, and profound guilt because of his misdeeds. She hides her beauty, which drives other humans insane with desire, lives in an isolated corner of the kingdom, and uses her powers of mind-control as rarely as possible. Fire's closest friend and sometime lover, Archer, thinks she is only safe when alone in a room, behind stone walls. But Fire doesn't think that's much of a life, and when Prince Brigan arrives at her homestead with a request for aid, Fire agrees to journey to the capital to interview a spy caught in the palace. Brigan is deeply suspicious of Fire - he knew Cansrel, and is sure the apple cannot have fallen far from the tree - and Fire soon discovers that any aid she might offer to the King will probably violate the careful ethics she has cultivated her whole life. To do good, she must do harm.

It's a complicated, layered plot and I won't say any more about it. The characters are amazing, in their complexity and intensity and believability, and the writing is gorgeous. FIRE (and GRACELING) are fantastic books - they will satisfy young readers and adult readers alike, they will satisfy picky readers and readers just looking to be swept away into a marvelous fantasy. They will satisfy readers who like adventure, intrigue, and romance. The characters - even the villains - are interesting, intelligent people; and the twists and turns of the plot are unpredictable.

Highly, highly recommended - read this book!

While our protagonist Fire is fairly diffrent from Kasta in Graceling, her storyline felt a bit recycled. Both heroines leave home on perilous journeys, both grossly misinterpret and underestimate their powers/talents, and both fall in love with princes despite the other men in their lives who are, of course, madly in love with them (and there's never any doubt in the readers mind who the girls will end up with). Another similarity that waxed on my nerves throughout this story was the author's apparent hate for any kind of conventional relationship, i.e. marriage and children born to married people. It seemed that every character in Fire was either illegitimate or a product of rape.

I could handle it in Graceling. I thought, okay, okay, that's just Kasta's character. But in Fire the totally irrisponsible bed-hopping and random pregnancies ceased being annoying and entered the realm of disturbing. Girl power is a clear theme in both novels, but the immature and hormone-driven behavior of the females in Fire is the exact opposite of that. And speaking of gratuitous sex...while the scenes aren't graphic, they felt irrelvent to the plot, especially considering that Fire isn't nearly as romantic as Graceling. One of the things that kept me engaged in Graceling was Po, Kasta's love interest. He's unique for a heartthrob, and we end up falling for him right along with Kasta. In this story, however, I really wanted to like Prince Brigan, but felt I was hardly given the chance. His and Fire's interactions were always infuriatingly short and failed to get to the heart of anything. I understand that Fire is supposed to be a balance between and adventure and romance--I appricate that, even. But the adventure was so bogged down with politics and the romance so lacking of, well, romance, that I couldn't fully enjoy either aspect.

On a positive end note, Cashore can spin a good tale; Graceling, her debut novel, is a good read. I gave Fire three stars because Cashore is a talented writer and a fresh voice in a world of predictable YA fiction. Kudos for that. But while I will most likely buy her next book, it will be because of the potential I saw in Grancling, not Fire, which just didn't live up to it's name for me.

After reading "Fire", I will never let anybody say that Kristen Cashore is not an ambitious or talented writer. Although this book is supposed to be a prequel to "Graceling," it has so little in common with "Graceling" that it really should be considered a totally different book in a totally different world.

Others have attempted to describe this story but they have failed badly. "Graceling" was about survival against all odds, this is a familiar type of story for most fantasy readers and it was easy for us to fall in love with it.

"Fire" is about wounds, both emotional and physical, and how people deal with them. This is a highly unusual and demanding story both for the writer and the reader. Cashore handles the subject with impressive grace and wit but perhaps drives the characters (and the readers) too far which explains most of the negative comments. Many reviewers, for example, comment on excessive sex in the story, excessive sex is just one of the many ways that people wound themselves and each other and so it is altogether appropriate to this story.

I was equally impressed by the size and depth of both the story and the required body of knowledge to support it. For example, she is required to write knowledgeably and entertainingly about:
- The why's and wherefore's of military organization and logistics (keeping this entertaining can be a particular challenge)
- The true nature of horse love (lots of drool is frequently involved)
- The strengths and weaknesses of the human spirit (a topic so broad that many authors spend the rest of their lives trapped in it)
- The politics and tactics of civil war in a medieval society (always entertaining, rarely pleasant)

There were some unexplained plot holes (such as why monsters prefer to eat each other) that weakened the story but overall this book is an amazing accomplishment and I'm impressed with the talent and audacity of the author in even attempting to tell such a story, much less getting it published. This showed great dedication by both the author and the publisher.

In summation, I was deeply impressed by "Fire" and enjoyed it quite a bit but it was just too hard and painful a story to read to earn a 5 star rating. However I still look forward to her next story with great anticipation.

Addendum: My two teenage boys have both finished the book and given in glowing reviews. They particularly liked Fire's maturity and felt that the book was better than Graceling so I'm bumping the book up to a 5 star review. Congratulations, they are a tough audience!

This book was a disappointment, especially after reading Graceling. Cashore seems to be going from an adventure writer to a soap opera writer. The book is listed by the ALA as a Young Adult book (young adult according to the ALA is 12 to 18 years). Teachers take note...this book is NOT appropriate for young teens due to the constant sexual nature of the book. Four of us read this novel and Graceling to debate future classroom novels and Reccomendation Lists and these will NOT be on our list (6th to 8th grade) because of the constant sex issue. (Parents don't mind violence in books, but sex and cursing always cause a problem and we don't get paid enough to deal with the controversy). We were all joking how Cashore went from a little sex (Graceling) to more sex (Fire) and we joked that her 3rd book will only be allowed to be sold in adult book stores! LOL I know sex sells on TV, but does it sell books?

I loved the heroine and all the action of Graceling. This story however was missing a plot.
Here is what worked: The heroine, the set up, and the world were interesting and the author can certainly write. There was a lot of potential here.

What didn't work: The pacing was completely off. I thought the book was just slow to start but by page 178 I was wondering where the story was going. The action picks up later but by then I didn't really care. The plot, too, was missing. Graceling was an excellent quest story. This was part coming-of-age, day in the life, court politics type of story. It just didn't have a clear focus to it. I started off liking Fire but her waffling about whether or not to use her powers became old fast.

When I read Graceling, I did so with the understanding that it is written for a teen audience. With that in mind, I enjoyed the book and was eager to read this one. Like others have mentioned, I, too, wished the author had chosen to continue the story of Katsa and Po rather than introduce a new type of character. This story is more about Fire, and monsters in general, than about Gracelings. The only link between the two stories is Leck, but he's not even the main character.

Fire does have some very interesting sub-plots, but the author's primary focus on the love story between Fire and Brigan. For me, the most interesting characters in this story died before our story even begins--Cansrel and King Nax. I'd definitely tune in for a story involving them as the main characters.

**spoiler alert** When I heard that Kristin Cashore had begun writing a prequel to Graceling I knew I would be the first in line to buy it. Even though I knew Katsa and Po would not male an appearance in Fire I was still excited to revisit the extraordinary world that Cashore had created. I expected the book to center around King Leck and how he came to be the man he was in Graceling. I had so many questions centering around his character and I just knew they would be answered. Well, to put in mildly my precious Graceling world was crushed and demolished. The prologue of Fire was great, but after that the book goes downhill very fast. The characters never connected to me or each other for that matter. I would have much rather read about Cansrel and his disturbing life. Instead I had to sit through 461 pages of "she is so beautiful" and "men and women both could not control themselves around her". I wish authors would stop repeating these lines. Once I read that a character is beautiful I understand I don't need it shoved into my brain.
The one person I couldn't wait to read about barely makes it into the book. Leck is there in the prologue and about halfway through but you get no more insight into him. It felt like Cashore put him in the book to pacify readers and to kill Archer. The way she killed Archer still bugs me. I felt like he should have had to pay for his actions which included getting to women, well one was a girl since she was only 15, pregnant within days of each other. Cashore killed him in a cruel way and all it accomplished was letting Fire start her relationship with Brigan without the complication of Archer. It was too convenient in my opinion. In the end this book felt like a bad soap opera and I don't know if I will continue on with her next book.

Yes, in my review of Graceling, by the same author, I said the same thing. But my feelings about Fire are more conflicted. I think I have a love/hate thing going with these books.
Love; the writing style. It's readable and exciting. You can't stop turning the pages. The characters are all interesting, some are very three dimensional and detailed. The plot and ideas are unique and intrigeing.
Hate; at first this book seems like it'll be an adventure story. But we don't really hear about the major battle at the end - the heroine's love interest just rides off to battle and we hear what happened later. Mostly it's a romance story, and it has a very gloomy end. We know a lot about Fire's feelings for a certain character, but we don't get any details as to where their relationship is going. The book could have been a lot more exciting and detailed.
Like Graceling, the characters had very conflicting personalities. There's the rapist of women and children and murderer who dearly loves the only child of his he didn't kill with its mother. There's the girl who kills her own father because he threatens someone who she's only heard of before. There's a king who orders another man's wife raped, because that man had an affair with his queen - and the child resulting from the rape is brought up just like a son by the man, who dosn't seem bothered about the circumstances of the child's birth. I admire that he cares for his wife's child, but it's a little odd he dosn't ever seem to have any eternal conflicts about that. Another character has multiple love affairs, is often angry at the one woman he claims to love, and blames her for the fact he's having the affairs. But appart from that he's one of the good guys.
I thought the general violence/rapes/murders and the ammount of sex and pregnancy amongst characters in their mid-teens was handled rather casually. Of course if a prince gets the servant girl he loves pregnant, it can be pulled off as romantic, cause princes don't have to worry about money!
Worthwhile book if you can pretend the characters are older, but I would not recommend it for younger teens.

Eighteen-year-old Fire lives in a world where she and certain animals and insects are known as "monsters." But they are not monsters in the way we normally associate with that word. They are all gorgeous, particularly in the exotic color of their hair, fur or skin. And the most astoundingly beautiful of all are human monsters like Fire. Fire was named for her most remarkable feature, long, lustrous hair which is predominantly red, but in reality is made up of multiple colors not found among regular humans, such that it is like rainbow-hued flame. The beauty of monsters, human and non-human, serves to entrance human prey. But far more dangerous than their seductive beauty is the ability of monsters to hypnotically sway the minds and hearts of humans. This innate talent is strongest of all in a human monster like Fire, who is able to not only manipulate the emotions of animals and humans, but to shape their thoughts as well, thereby gaining control over them.

Fire inherited this gift from her monster father. He used his magical powers for evil and encouraged her from earliest childhood to do the same. But Fire made a vow to herself long ago that she would never go down her father's dark path, and she's kept that promise ever since. Until the moment arrives when the king and prince of her kingdom desperately need her to help them protect the people of their country from the invasion of an enormously strong enemy army.

I absolutely loved Graceling, even though I normally don't much like sword-and-sorcery type fantasy, because the book is brilliantly done. In fact, I loved it so much, I was initially sorely disappointed to hear that this book is a prequel, not a sequel, to Graceling. But within pages of diving into Fire, I became every bit as enthralled with this story as Graceling.

Fire's personality is completely different than Katsa's, but they have some strong similarities. The main one is that both have magical powers, and each sees herself as an isolated freak in her society. In both books, Cashore also uses flashbacks to give us crucial glimpses of her heroines' formative years and the main influences that shaped their character. In both societies, women have access to birth control that gives them a degree of control over their fate that is not usually associated with pre-pharmaceutical historical eras. In both stories, the heroines have a powerful growth arc across their story, both in their understanding of and ability to use and control their magical powers, and, even more importantly, in their understanding of themselves as fierce young women who will stop at nothing to protect those they love--especially helpless children and animals. In both Fire and Graceling, there is a wonderful romantic subplot. Though the personality of the love interest in Fire is very different than Po in Graceling, he's equally appealing in his own way. Finally, though Fire, like Graceling, is primarily a magic-based "coming of age" story, with all the internal conflict and mental confusion that entails, there is plenty of action and adventure to keep fans of exciting, external conflict happy.

I highly recommend this book not only to teens, but to adults who enjoy fantasy novels with strong characters and excellent, tight plotting. It's a joy to read from start to finish.