Book Review: FIRE

Author: Kristin Cashore
Number of Pages: 461
Publisher: Dial
Release Date: October 5, 2009

Fire is a monster- a beautiful, irresistible monster. Her father, cruel and manipulative Cansrel (also a monster), still haunts her nightmares even though he has been dead for a number of years. Fire's childhood friend Archer is in love with her, and so is King Nash. But Nash's brother, Brigan, she's not so sure about. When Fire is sent to King City to use her mind-reading powers to help with the war, she realizes that first impressions are nothing to go by. In this romantic companion to Graceling, secrets will be revealed and drama will unfold, all while a war is raging backstage.

This book was pleasantly different from Graceling- not that I didn't like Graceling, because it was great- and it was nice that this book is similar yet different to its companion. I want to emphasize that you do not have to have read Graceling to read Fire, and vice versa. There is only one character that is the same between the two books, and they take place sort of in the same "world", if you will, but other than that they are really quite different from each other.

I enjoyed the creativity and the originality of this book. It is hard-core fantasy, but it isn't totally unbelievable- you know what I mean? Obviously it's fake, but it's not written in a way that broadcasts that. It's hard to explain. This book just isn't like any other book I've read, subject-wise. I also really liked Kristin Cashore's writing style. Everything is described in a way that makes an image automatically pop into your head. Each character is different, and you learn so much about each in every one of them as you progress through the book.

Having said all of those good things, there are some down sides to this novel. First, I felt like some characters were killed off for unnecessary reasons. I won't say who, because that would spoil the book, but there are a good handful that I thought could have lived. I didn't see why it was essential to the plot that they die. Also, this book just didn't wow me. It was great, don't get me wrong, but nothing about it made me want to go back and read it again.

Overall, this was a good read.

My Rating: :0) :0) :0) :0) 4 out of 5 smileys. In my opinion, this was not as good as Graceling.

Would I recommend it to a friend?: Even though I did not give this book a perfect score, I would still absolutely recommend it to a friend.

Hugs,
NutFreeNerd