Customer Reviews

Firethorn

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I keep reading complaints about this book. It's too gritty. It's too brutal. Etc. What it is is realistic. This is a book set in a fictional world that is based on our own medieval history. Women were not exactly kept on pedestals during that period. They certainly had no rights. And then there is a complaint about the excessive sex. Again- women in medieval times? Sex, cooking, cleaning, child rearing were about it for them. She was a camp follower. What do you think they did? Even today you'll find the same thing if you get too close to a military base.

This book was well written. You may not like the content (perhaps if you don't you can try a historical romance instead) but it is definitely a good book. I've been waiting for quite a while for the second installment, and begin to wonder if all those negative remarks from sensitive readers have put an end to a series I had hoped to continue reading.

It's hard to believe this is a first novel. I was thoroughly entertained. Micklem's writing seemed nearly as good to me as that of Gearge R. R. Martin or Robin Hobb. She has created a believable world in which her story takes place, rich with various forms of magic that are interwoven with a pantheon of gods, some jealous, others benevolent.

The story's main character, Firethorn, lives as an orphan in a life dictated by the social norms of the caste society in which she lives. She's lucky enough to be taken in as a handmaid to a generous noblewoman. But her luck runs out when her Dame dies and she flees her tormentuous new master, Sire Pava, living alone in the nearby Kingswood for a year. Her time spent in the forest results in her recieving some god given powers such as unnatural healing abilities and night vision. She returns to her village to discover that Sire Pava is joining the nearby Lord and his knights to go off to war for the King. One of the knights, Sire Galan, takes a liking to her and, seeing no better alternative, she agrees to be his 'sheath'- his mistress during wartime.

This book feels at times mystic, at others adventurous. The story focuses heavily on the developing reltionship between Firethorn and her new master as well as on the elements of the loooming war with a neighboring kingdom. At one point Micklem experiments with an interesting narrative perspective in which we're given a description of battle as Firethorn sees it through the eyes of her lover while he's engaged in the melee.

Micklem's medieval-ish dialogue is thoroughly convincing without being cumbersome. Her descriptions of battle are equally convincing and the accompanying action sequences

entertaining.

To me it felt like neither the war with its accompanying battle scenes nor the magic and mysticism were the main focus of Micklem's story. Rather, these elements make an entertaining backdrop for the development of the relationships between Firethorn and those she comes in contact with. Firethorn runs a gamut of emotions as she is treated unjustly time and again all the while developing a strong love for Sire Galan.

If you like character driven fantasy that's written intelligently and on an adult level then I think you'll like this book.

4.5 stars since 5 star ratings are reserved for only the greatest books.

Micklem writes beautifully about the ugly little secret that lies hidden within most fantasy novels: that the unequal distribution of power which occurs between men and women, different social classes, the physically attractive and the disfigured or merely average-looking, does not usually lead to an outbreak of nobless oblige. Nor does it lead to automatic exploitation. What "Firethorn" does is acknowledge that love is rarely pure, that it is easier to hurt those we love than those we hate, that if you have power it is easy to treat those who don't have power as if they are not quite human. I don't want to assign a writer's gender more importance than it is due, but I truly think this is a book that could only have been written by a woman. This is an excellent debut, and I look forward eagerly to reading more of Micklem's work.

I'm probably biased on this. _Firethorn_ is definitely a brutal fantasy, and I'm predisposed to like that sort of book. While Sarah Micklem doesn't match Martin or Kay (other authors of brutal fantasies) in writing style or characterization, she steps into territory I haven't seen them use yet.

Call it the territory of "low fantasy," maybe, the lives of servants, camp followers, and squires as they live both apart from and in the shadow of the knights and the lords. I was absolutely fascinated by this. It's not often that I read a fantasy novel which attempts to give characters like these their own concerns, rivalries, friendships, and love affairs. This is where a large part of the book's brutality comes in, too, as there is quite a bit of rape and the abuse of the powerless by those in power. But Micklem is only obeying the rules she's set up for the society. Having created a servant class, she has her higher-class characters treat them like servants. There are no lords here whose highest ambition is to be buddy-buddy with their valets, which I found refreshing.

The main character, Firethorn, at first alarmed me. She's an orphan, with a mysterious past, dreams about that mysterious past, a unique hair color for the country she's in (red), and an odd regard or task from the gods, including the god of fire and Hazard, the god of chance. So many fantasy novels nowadays start out with mysterious orphans of oh-so-special backgrounds that I almost gave up reading.

But I persisted, and I'm glad I did. Firethorn, unlike most of those mysterious orphans, actually suffers consequences from being without family to protect her. Once her old mistress dies, she's raped by the new lord of the manor, flees to the Kingswood for a year, comes back to live in squalor, and only has her conditions improved somewhat when she chooses to become the camp follower ('sheath') of Sire Galan, a knight of the passing army.

Firethorn follows Galan to the army camp, where 9/10 of the book's action takes place. Yet again, this is refreshing. The author does include some information on the background of her world, but spends much more time on showing Firethorn dealing with her circumstances, especially her duties as a healer in the camp and her jealousy of a higher-class woman Galan courts on a dare. She is active, doing magic to bind Galan to her, but just as in all the best stories, the heroine's best-laid plans go wildly astray...

Like I said, this isn't high fantasy. Firethorn knows some of the reasons the king is going to war, but not all of them, and she acts blindly, without regard to political consequences, because they're so far above her head for most of the story. I found it realistic, but other readers may find it tedious.

Why only four stars, if I liked the book so much? Outside Firethorn (who tells the story in first-person), there's little character development. A couple of the other camp followers are portrayed well, but they only appear in a few scenes. Galan is credibly blind and foolish, but it's hard to see what kind of person he is when he's not interacting with Firethorn, whose perspective limits the book somewhat. And since Micklem is a first-time novelist, the villains in the story tend to come across as almost pure evil.

I did still enjoy the book, and will look for the second- though since that seems set, based on the end of this one, to move into more high fantasy territory, I might not enjoy it as much.

When rating a book, several points must be taken into consideration: Style, Character Strength, and Story. "Firethorn" displays excellent ability in all three aspects. The writing style is real and personal, allowing the reader closer contact with the main character than most books can hope to achieve. Nor do the characters alienate the reader by becoming superficial or idealized. They remain believable personalities throughout the tale. Lastly, the story itself is intriguing, never proposing to set the characters on an impossible quest that can only be completed against terrible odds--instead it is driven by personality and "Fate" and those things which are simply in the control of lieges. Whatever magic is present, whether alien or known to the reader, is presented so honestly from the character's view that the reader cannot help but accept it as a reality of that world.

For such exceptional storytelling, the author deserves a 5.

For capturing my imagination and leaving me waiting for more, I give the author another 5.

I read this book for the first time a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Shortly after I was given my Kindle, I heard that the sequel was now available, and I bought Firethorn to re-read before moving on to Micklem's new book. The book is every bit as good as I remembered, but I'm regretting buying it for my Kindle.

Whatever software was used to convert the book to Kindle format did an atrocious job of it, and it was clearly not proofread. The text has spaces and hyphens thrown into the middle of words, often several times on a page. Quotation marks are frequently misplaced or absent. Hyphens and emdashes are used interchangeably, and are incorrect more often than correct. The Kindle version also seems to have a hard time with Micklem's fictional terminology, "correcting" compound words like Marchfield and skinsheath near constantly.

Long story short: DO buy Firethorn, but do yourself a favor and buy the physical book, not the Kindle version.

The good thing about this book is that Mickelm has a nice use of language, twisting the words so that we understand their meanings but so that they'll give a slightly different feel. For those who love anything mideval, it will feel pleasantly refreshing. We have knights and damsels, kings and princes, magic and war, but slightly altered. The world feels authentic; the societal, religious, and botantical details have all been thought out and planned. Also refreshing was that the war wasn't a major part of the plot, and that I didn't feel the need to constantly flip back to some sketched map in the front.

The bad thing is that the story was one horrible brutality after another. The heroine, Firethorn, has occasional bouts of kindness, as does her whore friend Mai, but except for those two, the rest of the characters are as charming as feral dogs. There's not a single decent male character in the entire book. They're all rapists, sadists and murderers, and the author leads us to believe that that's normal. Sure, life is like that sometimes, and life may have been like that in the middle ages, but even [King of the unhappy ending] Guy Gavriel Kay's has more hope and cheer than this.

Like the other critiquers, I agree that the ending left something to be desired. Since the plot revolves around Firethorn and her beau, I would have hoped they'd have some kind of romantic resolution. There's no real love between those two--I don't think either character even muttered the word---there's just a lot of lust and jealousy. Instead of a typical storybook romance where everything is sweetness and light and most fights are silly misunderstandings, these two seem like one of those horribly angry couples who fight all the time, the ones where you want to shout, "For God's sake, just divorce! It's obvious you hate each other!"

I don't mind a dark milieu once in a while, but in my opinion, the characters must rise above the filth. I read to the end because of her engaging conflicts, but when I finished, I wanted to take a long shower. It's a shame she couldn't end it with one book. I liked the main character enough to wonder what happened to her, but Firethorn is set in a horrible, grim world peopled with evil and selfish brutes, and I'd rather not visit again.

I read this book a while back, not long after it first came out.

It so completely engrossed me, that, when I first picked it up I couldn't put it down again.

The really liked the main character Firethorn ( originally named Luck ). I did not like her Blood master Lord Galan. Sure she chose to go with him, but he is essentially her master and from I could see there was no love there at all just sex, lust, jealosy and obssession.

This review is written a while after the last review on this book as I was looking to see if the next had come out yet ( no such luck ) and decided to look at other peoples reviews, then put my 2 cents worth in aswell.

In the first book Firethorn and the other servants are called Mudpeople; the Gods made them from mud. The High Born nobility are called Bloods; As they are said to have the blood of the Gods in thier viens.

I know what I want to happen to Firethorn, but what I want I believe has been done many times before. I want her to find out where she came from, who her people are and I want her to be VERY important to her people. I want her to be able to rub all those self rightious, arrogant, High born noble faces in her importance and see how they deal with one of thier Mudpeople! making desicions that affect them. Though she'd have to grow up a bit in maturity and politics before she could.

I'd also like to see her with someone who deserves her as Lord Galan certainly does not! And I don't care what Micklem gets him to do in future novels, he never will.

I'd also really like to see some more secondary character developement.

I really liked this first attempt. I loved the poetic descriptions, I loved the world ( though yes it is a brutal one as others have said ) and I really loved Firethorn herself.

I look forward to the next book.

I don't normally read fantasy books. I picked it up in the bookstore thinking my nephew might like it as he has read the LOTR books, all the Harry Potters, just recently finished Eragon and is now reading the Otori series (by Lian Hearn). However as I began reading it in the book store I became engrossed. I bought it and continued reading it when I got home, staying up until 2am. It's been a long time since I've read a book this good.

The writing is first rate. This author knows how to weave a tale and she does not skip corners. All of her characters have depth, even the lesser ones. The best thing is the two main characters are not perfect. They have flaws. This meant I never knew what might happen, nothing was predictable.

This is the first in a trilogy. I am looking forward to the 2nd book.

i have just put the book down after finishing the last page and felt moved immediately to see what other customers of amazon had said about it, and what other buyers of 'firethorn' had also bought. now i find myself writing my first amazon review, so all of that must say something... anyway, i am generally a fan of fantasy/science fiction (especially the kind with a medieval bent, like LOTR, or c.j. cherryh's "morgaine saga"), but i particularly enjoyed micklem's vivid imagery and metaphical style. the narrative is filled with easy similes like "...high on a rocky spur driven like a talon into the fat earth of the plain" that brought the story to life in my imagination. there was enough action and excitement to keep me reading late into hours that might be more wisely spent sleeping. perhaps this book will strike the hearts of women more then men? i don't know, but as a woman, i loved it!