A review by yvo_about_books
The Fires by Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir

2.25

 Finished reading: February 2nd 2023

"Poets can prattle on about love, but I know her, I've seen her at work. Love is nothing but a natural disaster."

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Amazon Crossing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

I can never resist a good Nordic noir story, and I was intrigued by The Fires as soon as I read the blurb. I loved the sound of the Icelandic setting, the focus on the volcano science and the natural disaster element, and I was excited to try a new-to-me Icelandic author in translation. I can't deny there is so much potential here in this book! Sadly, the actual story didn't exactly live up to expectations for me though for multiple reasons.

First of all, I have to stress that I still love the premise of The Fires. The natural disaster element, the volcanology, the Icelandic setting... It all had so much potential and it was one of the main reasons why I wanted to read this story in the first place. I do love it when a story manages to teach me something new along the way, so I was initially very excited by the amount of science incorporated into the plot. Then I started to wonder if I had actually picked up a non fiction title instead with only a minor fictional sideline... Because the fact is: about 60-70% of the story is basically volcanology theory, with SO much scientific details that it makes your head spin. Like I said, I don't mind learning something new, but this was just an overload of science and not enough fictional story to balance things out. I feel that only people who are extremely interested in volcanology and want to learn ALL the details will make it to the end without skimreading. (I know I didn't, even though I was interested initially.)

Another major struggle I had was with the fictional part of The Fires. Not only did it feel a bit underdeveloped after the sheer amount of scientific details, I wasn't all too happy with the content either. This mainly had to do with the fact that I never warmed up to the main character Anna, and only started to despise her even more after the active cheating element was introduced. Was her role as a volcanologist intriguing? Yes. But I really hated having to spend time with her and seeing her treat her husband and family that way. Also, insta-love much? This story would have been so much better without the romance cliches... Then again, I can't say I was a fan of the family drama included either.

I also wasn't sure what to make of the writing style itself. While I did like the almost poetical way of describing certain scenes, I did wonder why on earth the dialogues weren't properly marked. There was no punctuation whatsoever to indictate what part of the text was actually spoken out loud or who was saying it, and I actually had to reread paragraphs more than once to fully understand what was going on. I'm not sure if this was a formatting error or on purpose (I hope it was the first), but it slowed down the pace considerably and got really frustrating after a while. The pace was quite slow in general, up until the final 20% or so where all hell broke loose.

All in all, The Fires didn't end up being the exciting natural disaster thriller I thought it would be (or at least not until you reach the final part of the story). Instead, it's a rather dense and scientific oriented volcanology account with an unwanted cheating element thrown in. Definitely not for me, but it might work better for you even you don't mind the science overload or the romance cliches.