I know this is a war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party.
Fire
by Kristin Cashore
Genre: YA Fantasy
About: Fire is a monster. Like the beautiful monster creatures that enchant their prey before killing them, Fire is a human monster who can enchant others by her unnatural beauty and make them do anything. Now her King wishes her to use her powers to win the war, but Fire is afraid - she knows what she's capable of and it terrifies her.
The Good
The prologue immediately drew me into the story. It was totally heartbreaking and connected well with the previous novel, giving us a backstory to a character we didn't get to see much from before. Then we move into Fire's story and I enjoyed finding out about her world (full of these beautiful monster creatures with hypnotic powers and how they've shaped society). Kristin Cashore's strengths are in her world-building, her descriptions of unique powers and her strong character bonds. I do also like that her female characters aren't virgins saving themselves for The One. Sex is shown in a healthy way, as an enjoyment with either someone you love or as something fun, there's no shame or awkwardness put on characters having sex.
The Bad
Fire begins as a character that suffers from feeling too similar to Katsa (the protagonist to her debut novel). Like Katsa, she's an outsider due to her powers, which get her likewise called a monster. Also like Katsa, she's fiercely loved within her close circle of friends and her greatest fear appears to be motherhood. However, similarities soon end and Fire instead turns into a disappointingly passive character. Although we get a pretty epic and heroic moment early on in the novel, for the middle chunk of the book Fire does virtually nothing. She's too afraid to use her powers and takes too long to engage with anything useful. When she is part of a plan and active, she's interesting to read, but this happens rarely. Brigan, her love interest, has an opposite issue in doing too much and being good at everything he does. If it had been in his POV, the story might have been more interesting as he's actively involved with the war, which in Fire's POV I struggled to care about.
Cashore isn't bad at writing villains - Leck and Cansrel are brilliant, but they're hardly present, instead the villains are supposed to be the warring lords, which Fire has hardly any interaction or connection with. Either the story should have been Brigan's to tell, or Leck should have been the main antagonist of the novel as the dynamic between him and Fire was interesting but made up for such a small amount of the story.
The Somewhat Iffy
The pace of this novel was strange to me. The middle was so slow and uninteresting and then the end action was very rushed. Character relationships have a few important reveals that lack the time to breathe, and some of those reveals were messy. As was Fire's motivation for why she saved Brigan as often as she did before she had ever met him (and at great personal sacrifice to herself each time). Convenient, though, as he ends up being her love interest.
Also I really like Archer's character but I do question if it was necessary for him to have the complications he did - once maybe, but twice?
Overall
It felt like I was re-reading Graceling at the beginning as the story and characters felt far too familiar. However it does separate from its predecessor, but in unfortunate ways. Fire ironically lacks a spark and Brigan disappears too much for me to connect with him. A slow burn that has moments of good action, set in an interesting world, let down by its two main characters and underused villains.
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