The Fire: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: chessboard drawing, chess service, chess tourney, Vartan Azov, Ali Pasha, Taras Petrossian (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Fans of Neville's debut, The Eight (1988), which long before there was a Da Vinci Code featured a complex historical setting, ciphers, conspiracies, puzzles and a hunt for an object that could change the course of the world, will welcome this stellar sequel. Alexandra Solarin, child chess prodigy now grown, finds herself immersed in the Game, searching for a legendary chess set, the Montglane Service, which when assembled spells out the formula for the secret of immortality. The quest for the set ranges from the harem of Ali Pasha in 19th-century Albania to present-day Baghdad and Washington, D.C., and involves such historic figures as Charlemagne, Isaac Newton, Lord Byron and Napoleon. Despite the staggering amount and quality of the research, nothing feels shoehorned or extraneous. The story's relentless pace is matched by characters both sympathetic and real. In the end, readers will be heartened to find signs pointing to the continuation of the Game in future novels. (Oct.)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com When Katherine Neville's The Eight appeared in 1988, it marked something new: a thriller combining history and fiction in parallel narratives that told the story of a potentially world-changing secret. One strand explored mysterious connections among real historical figures, while another followed present-day adventurers unraveling clues from the past on a perilous quest for hidden treasure -- awfully Da Vinci Code one might say, except that The Eight predated Dan Brown's novel by 15 years. Now Neville returns with The Fire, a much-anticipated sequel, but the question isn't just how she expands on that first novel, but how well she works within what has become a tried-and-true formula. In structure and elements, the new novel has much in common with The Eight: one story set in the 1820s, another in the 1990s, with characters in each period playing a high-stakes game related to a chess set that once belonged to Charlemagne. At the end of the first novel, the players learned that the board and pieces contained the formula for the elixir of life; here it's discovered that the board may hold more abstract information about natural order and balance -- the Big Picture, it's called at one point, the Original Instructions at others. Whatever it is, it seems worth killing for. Many characters from The Eight reappear, but the focus now is on Xie, a 12-year-old chess prodigy who has lost a pivotal game due to Amaurosis Scacchistica, or chess blindness -- "the failure to spot a truly obvious danger." En route to a rematch that could make her the youngest grandmaster ever, she and her father encounter even greater dangers: evidence that one of those long-buried pieces may have been unearthed, a discovery that leads to her father's murder. Ten years later, Xie, now forbidden by her mother to play chess, is summoned to Colorado for her mother's birthday party, but her mother seems to have vanished, leaving behind a series of clues, among them a chessboard laid out with Xie's last game. Soon other guests arrive, including both the opponent to whom Xie lost that game and a group of neighbors with surprising ties to the world of chess. There are eight people in all, of course. The Game is afoot once more. Part of the interest here is the way that Neville layers and repeats motifs. For example, in the book's historical narrative -- set in the 1820s -- another party of eight gathers to discuss the game, including Napoleon's mother, Letizia Bonaparte, and Lord Byron. But if the plot is a giant chess game, it's odd that none of the pieces gets taken; in both the historic narrative and the modern one, the characters just shuffle around the board spaces, staring menacingly before moving on. And Xie's chess blindness seems a permanent affliction, since she rarely seems to know what's going on. As for all the historic connections -- from the Magi to Sufi alchemists to Jefferson's influence on the design of Washington, D.C., and right up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- much of the background information sounds as dry and impersonal as a Wikipedia entry, and the characters delivering it are often pretty lifeless. Worse, little of it comes together dramatically. In books like these, the goal is to dazzle the reader with the final revelation of a grand design. But the clues and connections in The Fire offer more convolution than complexity. Neville may once have been the grandmaster of this sub-genre, but The Fire seems a stalemate about halfway through.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 451 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345500679
• ISBN-13: 978-0345500670
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #60,251 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I was prepared to love it, but I didn't, October 27, 2008

By	Scott Bright "scottypotty" (Grayslake, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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As a sequel to the spectacularly awesome 20-year-old book, "The Eight," I was sure I was going to love this book. "The Eight" was so well written. It was challenging and fun and intriguing and deep. I was on the edge of my seat and lost quite a bit of sleep trying to finish it. I was so impressed with Ms. Neville's writing skill that I was certain I'd love anything else she'd written.

Wrong. I'm so incredibly disappointed. The style of "The Fire" was so different that it seemed like it was written by a completely different author. I just couldn't believe it was written by the same woman. It was complicated and convoluted rather than refreshingly complex. The prose at many points was trite, whereas "The Eight" was stylish and significant.

I wasn't excited about the plot until about 250 pages into the book. That's a long time to be plodding through. I felt particularly mired down early in the book during a chapter filled to the brim with Arab names of people and places. I had a really difficult time figuring out what was going on with the story because I couldn't pronounce the names or keep them straight. There were plenty of Arab names in "The Eight," too, so I guess they weren't all crammed in there like a history lesson since I didn't stumble at all in the first book.

There were two things in particular that really bugged me about this book. The first was the overuse of clichés while trying to be clever about it. If you read this book, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about after you read, "As Key would say," followed by a cliché like Practice Makes Perfect for the tenth (or twentieth) time. The second was the lack of real tension or danger. The characters kept saying they were scared to death, but I couldn't reason why. In contrast, I doubt the characters ever said this in "The Eight," although they clearly were in peril during most of the book.

It pains me to say this because it's obvious the author worked very, very hard on this book, but I just can't recommend "The Fire." I hope you'll go back and read "The Eight" instead because it's really worth reading.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Erratic, convoluted, ultimately unsatisfying, November 4, 2008

By	Karen Marie (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

I started re-reading The Eight as soon as I found out that I was going to get an advance reader's copy of The Fire. It was as good as I remembered.

The Fire, on the other hand, was like a knight on a chessboard. It moved two forward then one sideways, then two to the right and one back. I didn't find it cohesive. Characters appeared and left abruptly, plot lines started up then petered out.

It picks up many years after Cat Velis and Alexander Solarian ended The Game and got married. Their 12-year old daughter Alexandra is a chess wizard. Something goes terribly wrong in Russia when she and her father go there for a match, and it turns out that The Game has started up again.

The action was very improbable. Alexandra is estranged from her mother but gets invited to her house in Colorado, solves some very strange and esoteric clues, and all of a sudden her aunt and opponent-to-be from the never-started or finished match in Russia show up. Nokomis Key, a childhood friend, is coincidentally available to fly everybody all over the place to meet people who spout obscure clues and hint at things never explained. Then we're back in Washington DC, with a lot of early American history thrown in to explain the interesting nature of the city's layout and a strange dinner party that just seems put there to describe the meal and exclaim over who was invited. But the food sounded wonderful.

We also meet some extremely surprising characters. There is the obligatory second time period plot and it all gets convoluted and nothing ever seems to resolve to my satisfaction.

There are wonderful historical facts and events explained in ways that tie the entire world together in a satisfying way from a purely intellectual viewpoint. But eventually even those interesting gems and speculations are lost in the overly-complicated plot.

Alas, I could never really care for the characters, and I wasn't really willing to try to untwist the Black and White twists that this book kept throwing at me.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Little Sequel That Couldn't, November 4, 2008

By	Art Girl "Laurie Jacobsen" (arizona) - See all my reviews

I'm sorry to say that I found this book to be an utter disappointment. The Eight was amazing, so if you haven't read it - do, but then resist the temptation for more and don't read The Fire. It's too bad that Katherine Neville didn't go with her initial gut reaction that "the way for [The Eight] to remain unique was not to make it into a sequel..." because I really feel like she slapped something together to sell books to everyone who loved The Eight. I would have liked this book much better if there had been a depth to character development that there was in The Eight, and plot development, and denouement equal to that of The Eight. Someone mentioned cider and roller skates - it was really ridiculous. And then it just ends. Like she just got up from her desk one day and said, "okay, I'm tired of this, let's wrap it up." then wrote two more pages and called it done. It's really too bad, because with more time and attention it could have been great.