Book Review: Fire by Kristin Cashore

Kristin Cashore is an American author and has written a trilogy of fantasy books, of which Fire is the second. This was my first attempt at reading a 'hardcore' fantasy book for quite a while and I finished it in one day! It usually takes me about two chapters to know whether a book is going to be a winner for me or not and as soon as I started reading Fire I could tell I was going to enjoy it. 

This novel follows a young woman named Fire who is part human/part 'Monster.' Because she is so beautiful and can control people with her mind she is hated and feared by everyone around her. The powerful King of her country finds out about her talents and commands her to travel to the King's City so she can interrogate prisoners for him. As she embarks on this journey, she ends up learning a lot about herself and about human nature. There are the usual evil characters, unexpected romance and plenty of action & fighting scenes.

One of the key factors that make a book enjoyable for me is how I relate to the characters. This wasn't a problem with Fire. Although she isn't my favourite book character ever ( that would have to go to Tris from Veronica Roth's Divergent series), I was definitely on her side.

What stood out to me the most in this novel was how complete it was. I feel that with fantasy novels, the settings and characters are often very complicated and hard to keep track of. Whilst there were a lot of characters in this novel and the setting changed numerous times, it still felt pulled together and complete.

I would recommend this book to older teens ( 15 & older) because of more mature themes.   ( But of course as a librarian it is not my job to censor!)

Overall I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.