Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - Fire

Your enjoyment of this book is going to depend entirely on whether or not you like the characters. I know there is a decent sized contingency of people who like Graceling and don't care for Fire or Bitterblue. As a teenager, I loved the whole trilogy and didn’t understand why others didn’t. Now that I'm rereading them as an adult I feel the same, but I understand where those people are coming from. Graceling is the outlier in the trilogy. Its much more plot focused than the other two, so if you need action in your fantasy to enjoy it you may not like this one or its sequel as much. There's political stuff going on, and there is a war, but the book is not about that really. It's about Fire and her journey and her growth. Personally, I love this cast of characters in general and Fire specifically, so I was invested in her journey and thus loved the book.

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kbusemeyer's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book is longer and more evolved in its language than Graceling was. I do miss the other characters, but it was nice watching Brigand and Fire’s characters and relationship develop.

The concept of Fire being a “monster” and that her beauty was just so irresistible is really hard to imagine. The mind part I get, but I think it was a little annoying to read about

Nash being so in love with her he tries to SA her

. Her relationship with Archer was also very confusing although his death was honestly so tragic especially at the time of Clara and Mila having his baby. The Jod being his dad part did make a ton of sense but I definitely did not put it together as fast as Archer had, I found out when Fire realized.

Seeing Leck was interesting, the way of getting between worlds always confused me like basically “fall down mountain” and somehow come out the other side of the tunnel. I guess he settled back into the Graceling world after Fire’s horse stabbed him in the eye and then 20+ years later is when Katsa and co encountered him.

I wanted to like this book more, I do think it was better writing than Graceling, but it was just slow and I found the characters less endearing just due to the constant “she’s pretty, I’m in love” which I get is her power. I did like seeing her character develop and the

reveal that she killed Canstrel by making him commit suicide and her coming to terms with loving someone but not agreeing with what he did.

I feel like sometime there were just unnecessary twists and turns and reveals

(surprise Brigand is actually Brocker’s son, your grandmother is actually alive) - nice to have, I guess but didn’t add anything besides that genetics were really strong in peoples ability I guess.

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elle_dee's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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angelareads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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marieketron's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I read Fire very closely after Graceling this time, but I still prefer Fire ever so slightly even though I noticed a ew more things I enjoyed less this time around. The main characters of the two novels, Katsa and Fire, are similar in that they are both extremely forthright, open, and specific about what they think and feel, even when they don't know what it is exactly that they are feeling. I think I preferred Fire because her environment resembles more closely our modern rape culture - exacerbated by her unnatural beauty. On top of that, she is learning throughout the course of the book to stand up for herself and set boundaries, even with those people she loves the most, which is a hard but important thing to do that I can relate with.

This time around I did notice that there are a Lot of dead mothers in this book. Of course there are dead fathers as well, but they mostly held important political positions and / or were present to raise their children, neither of which applies to all the dead mothers. I would have loved to have seen more older women besides Roen and Tess. On a more personal preference, I felt there was a bit too much plot in this story regarding the conspiracies and factions and general court intrigue, which was compounded by the presence of Leck. On this re-read I pretty much skimmed through the plot-heavy bits.

The main romance is one of my favourites in any work of fiction, as is the case for Katsa and Po. I don't necessarily rank one above the other, but I like that both pairings went on a road trip where they spent a significant amount of time with each other as well as in a castle where they keep running into each other. I'm a sucker for the involuntary road trip as a tool for character development and it worked really well in both cases.

3rd reading: the age gap of the older men falling in love with younger girls is a bit creepy for being such a consistent pattern

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