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murasakiana's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
estoycabezabajo's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
shirlee2024's review against another edition
2.0
I loved The Eight, and I was definitely disappointed with this sequel. Maybe it would have helped to re-read The Eight first. At least, that might have helped understand the plot. I don't think it would have done anything for the lack of character development. If you loved The Eight too, you'll probably want to read this book just because it's hard to believe that the negative reviews are right. That was my attitude. Sadly, the other negative reviews were, in my opinion, pretty much spot on.
hldonavant's review against another edition
5.0
GREAT read! Chess, russian history, mystery intrigue....fast paced!
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
2.0
I read, and adored, "The Eight" when I read it as a teenager, so I was excited to find that Katherine Neville had written a sequel. Unfortunately, "The Fire" did not live up to the standard of its prequel. I think that the author had had too much time to think about the characters and to fall a little in love with them, so that "The Fire" had a strong patina of "aren't my characters truly fascinating?" to it. That said, the plot was certainly fast-paced and eventful and the historical segments seemed very well researched. If you want an entertaining thriller, I would recommend that you pick up either "The Eight" or "A Calculated Risk" and leave this one be.
jfkaess's review against another edition
2.0
Her book "The Eight" is one of my favorites. this followup is horrid, tedious, flat, and not fun and worst of all, the ending is unfulfilling.
pr727's review against another edition
2.0
I was very excited to find a sequel to The Eight. I listened to the audio book - many annoyingly difficult to understand accents. The plot tried very hard to be complicated and intricate but just didn't hold together. Many conclusions arrived at out of thin air, lots of characters who's role was not satisfactorily explained. I am quite disappointed with The Fire.
strawfly14's review against another edition
3.0
Me ha gustado bastante, la verdad, en la tónica del primer libro. Además tiene un final cerrado y decente, y no se me ha hecho una lectura pesada. Si es verdad que no me parece tampoco un libro de diez, pero creo que es una novela bien construida y con un argumento interesante (en continuación de la trama ya iniciada en El Ocho). No sé, me ha dejado buenas sensaciones.
branch_c's review against another edition
3.0
I remember enjoying The Eight long ago when it was first published - it certainly struck me as a unique construction at the time, and as a bonus it involved chess, in which I was also interested. I later read Neville's The Magic Circle, was less impressed, and never picked up this one until now.
It does seem to share a lot of what made The Eight interesting, but either my tastes have changed over time or the repeat performance just isn’t as good (or both).
This time, I found the cryptic speeches a bit rambling and pointless - it seems that all of the characters know more than Alexandra, but although none of them apparently distrust her, they nevertheless keep failing to simply tell her what they know. The fact that they choose to reveal this bit of information to her at one moment rather than some other bit of information or some other moment seemed artificial to me.
And when the characters pronounce dramatically and frequently “I am the White King” and “she is the Black Queen”, I struggle to grasp why it matters. In fact, Lord Byron himself makes this point when he says “it doesn’t matter, this business of teams. It’s the chess service itself that is important - the powers it holds, not this foolish Game.” (p. 202). But even worse, it’s never explained to my satisfaction how it is that the chess set holds or protects anything. The secret of immortality comes from the formula for creating the elixir, and whatever it took to develop that, it was not physical possession of specific chess pieces - or at least not only that. And it’s not clear that this is even what’s motivating the “bad guys” in this volume.
The too frequent use of the phrase "as Key would say" in order to drive home the point that the character is fond of clichéd sayings got old for me fairly early in the book. Also, it slightly bothered me not knowing how to pronounce "Xie".
Clearly a lot of research has gone into this book, and the effort by Neville to tie together seemingly disparate fragments of history is laudable, so I’ll round up to three stars for that. But the end result, for me, is less of an engaging story and more of a protracted dump of information to gradually fill the reader in on the results of all this research. Creative but contrived, and never really grabbed me.
A couple of minor editorial points in case any publishers of future editions are reading this:
p. 275: "semiphore" should be "semaphore"
p. 315: "Red Cloud" should be "Red Cedar" (two occurrences)
It does seem to share a lot of what made The Eight interesting, but either my tastes have changed over time or the repeat performance just isn’t as good (or both).
This time, I found the cryptic speeches a bit rambling and pointless - it seems that all of the characters know more than Alexandra, but although none of them apparently distrust her, they nevertheless keep failing to simply tell her what they know. The fact that they choose to reveal this bit of information to her at one moment rather than some other bit of information or some other moment seemed artificial to me.
And when the characters pronounce dramatically and frequently “I am the White King” and “she is the Black Queen”, I struggle to grasp why it matters. In fact, Lord Byron himself makes this point when he says “it doesn’t matter, this business of teams. It’s the chess service itself that is important - the powers it holds, not this foolish Game.” (p. 202). But even worse, it’s never explained to my satisfaction how it is that the chess set holds or protects anything. The secret of immortality comes from the formula for creating the elixir, and whatever it took to develop that, it was not physical possession of specific chess pieces - or at least not only that. And it’s not clear that this is even what’s motivating the “bad guys” in this volume.
The too frequent use of the phrase "as Key would say" in order to drive home the point that the character is fond of clichéd sayings got old for me fairly early in the book. Also, it slightly bothered me not knowing how to pronounce "Xie".
Clearly a lot of research has gone into this book, and the effort by Neville to tie together seemingly disparate fragments of history is laudable, so I’ll round up to three stars for that. But the end result, for me, is less of an engaging story and more of a protracted dump of information to gradually fill the reader in on the results of all this research. Creative but contrived, and never really grabbed me.
A couple of minor editorial points in case any publishers of future editions are reading this:
p. 275: "semiphore" should be "semaphore"
p. 315: "Red Cloud" should be "Red Cedar" (two occurrences)