The Book: Fire by Kristin Cashore. While it is set in the same world as is Cashore’s first novel, it is not a sequel to Graceling. In fact, if my understanding of the chronology is correct, the events in Fire take place some years earlier. Regardless, having read Graceling is not a prerequisite for understanding Fire.
The Premise: Fire is a self-described monster. The upshot of it is that she has some powers toward reading and influence minds — powers she’s seen used for bad, that she herself is only learning to control. Powers that frighten her. A lot of other stuff happens in the book, of course, but I see the main story as Fire growing into her own mind.
Why I Liked It (contains spoilers for both Fire and Graceling):
- The tie in with Graceling. It’s not necessary; as a novel, Fire stands on its own. But for folks who’ve read the first one, the link is a nice touch.
- Fire’s powers — and personality — are decidedly more nuanced than are Katsa’s in Graceling. In terms of personality, Katsa tends to run hot and cold. And her Grace, even among other Graced characters, made her disproportionately powerful most of the time. In contrast, there are a lot more defenses with respect to Fire’s powers. And her actions and reactions to any given situation are generally tempered and needled by a variety of cooperating and competing influences. Though this falls apart at certain points in the novel, Fire is — for the most part — an engaging, complex character.
- In terms of development and complexity, Fire has several other characters who are her near equals. Okay, okay. Given that she’s the main character (hello! her name! is the title of the book!), she is probably the most developed character. But there are a good handful of others who aren’t far behind… and another handful who aren’t far behind them. In short, Cashore takes care to ensure that even characters with limited “screen time” come across as individuals. This is particularly nice with the other major characters, as none of them feel like a plot device for Fire’s revelations or heroic deeds or character development or whatever.
- Fire’s romantic relationships require negotiation. Particularly — the negotiation is equitable (or, when it’s not, we feel that this is ungood and a red flag). It’s ongoing, rather than something that happens once to set the terms of the relationship and then everything is sunshine and unicorn farts (aka, rainbows) after that. And it’s realistic — normal for each side to have some unsettling even after the compromise seems to have been reached.
- Menstruation impacts Fire. Part of it is unique to Fire’s experience as a monster, but part of it is the cramping and backache that so many menstruating people experience now. But it was important to me that this was something significant enough to matter every time Fire has a menstrual bleed, rather than something mentioned as a one-off and then ignored.
By Cilla [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
