FIRE by Kristin Cashore

Last night I went to the 10 year reunion of my High Point Academy classmates and had an amazing time (but then again, we always did). I went to a small private school–36 of us in our graduating class–so in effect, these were kids with whom I grew up. For nostalgia’s sake, Mandi brought our 8th grade yearbook and I immediately turned to our “Remember When” page.

Remember when…Sarah didn’t use big words.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Although I went by Sarah in those days; it could because I was the only Sarah in that class and was thus able to avoid sharing the name with another girl.

Looking at my Remember When, I suppose it came as no surprise to anyone that I now work in publishing. :) Speaking of which, I finally got around to reading FIRE by Kristin Cashore, the review for which follows beneath the cut.

Review of FIRE by Kristin Cashore

FIRE by Kristin Cashore

Being on holiday means there is more reading of the leisure variety and less of the work-related variety. I bought FIRE a few months ago with every intention of reading it immediately, but I might have overestimated how much reading I am humanly able to manage in a given day.

FIRE is a companion novel to GRACELING, Cashore’s debut. It takes place in the Dells, a country east of the Seven Kingdoms, populated by the most fantastic creatures—monsters.

Fire is the last human monster. Cursed with too much beauty and the power to control people’s minds, she despises her own existence. But the kingdom is on the brink of a civil war and Fire begins to discover that those traits she hates about herself may have the power to help and heal as well as harm.

I enjoyed FIRE much more than GRACELING, which I found to be a straightforward, predictable high fantasy complete with swordfighting and war and romance. FIRE is much more sophisticated, and I think it’s in part due to Fire herself. Katsa from GRACELING annoyed me more often than not as she seemed like a typical “kickass heroine”: able to rip out your nuts with one hand while gouging your eyes out with the other, looking gorgeous all the while.

Fire is markedly different from Katsa because she is feminine. My favourite heroines tend to embrace rather than subsume their femininity (please see my love for Phèdre nò Delaunay in the KUSHIEL’S LEGACY universe) instead of aping traditionally masculine attributes like immense physical strength or fighting abilities and supplementing them with superficially “girly” traits like great hair (ahem, Buffy, cough). Of course, I love when authors are able to successfully subvert these tropes into the realm of genderqueer (like Tamora Pierce’s Alanna), but it’s rarer than I’d like.

Is too much beauty a curse? Many of us wouldn’t think so, but I think Cashore does a great job at conveying the sort of burden too much beauty endows. She also makes Fire a wonderful feminist heroine, not because she can shoot arrows, but because her womanly attributes become her strengths. I also love that Fire wants more than anything in the world to become a mother, but will not risk giving birth to another monster. I, who feel absolutely no such compunction, found her dilemma heartbreaking.

FIRE is published as young adult here in the States, but I found this novel to fit better into the “New Adult” category Cap’n Sweet Valley and I are trying to publish. While Fire is seventeen, she seemed much older, and her narrative seemed less YA than adult. I know both FIRE and GRACELING were published as adult abroad, but that may be because other markets don’t have as developed a YA section as we do.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book immensely. This isn’t to say it’s not without flaws because it certainly has them, but I was so pleased by Fire as a feminist heroine that I am able to overlook them. Recommended.

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