Fire Bringer, by David Clement-Davies

Fire Bringer is one of those titles that sticks with you, one of the ones you heard all about at one time or another; it was the book that all the cool kids had read and that everyone knew about. For me, this was a middle school sentiment. It was with those memories in mind when I took it down off my shelf, where it has waited patiently for years.

It's also worth mentioning that I had read The Sight, also by Clement-Davies, when I still was in middle school. About the only things I can recall about it are that all of the characters who mattered were wolves, there was a prophecy and a chosen one, en epic adventure, and I loved the heck out of it.

Fire Bringer is exactly the same book, except with deer and minus the dazzlement.

To be fair, I've come a long way since then. I read things differently now, and to give credit where it is justly due, The Sight is almost certainly better crafted than Fire Bringer simply because it was not Clement-Davies' first book. This didn't necessarily make Fire Bringer any less painful of a read in terms of the prose. My biggest complaint was that the action in the novel was sorely lacking; there were many times where something was told where it should have been shown - left to summary when a scene would have been much more effective.

Despite this, I read all four hundred and ninety eight pages of it. Even though the presentation made me cringe and the story's conventions are (in essentials) exactly identical to The Sight, somewhere in there I found myself invested. If I figure out why I'll let you know. In the end I suppose it comes down to a good story. The prophecy convention is about as nuanced as a parlor trick, but like a parlor trick, it still, against all odds and my best intentions, works. Rannoch's quest, his denial of his role as the chosen one, his desire to learn who he is are all questions basic enough and yet resonant enough to carry the story on its circuitous journey around the high- and lowlands north of Hadrian's wall.

There is also one more point on which I ought to give credit: Clement-Davies is brutal with his characters. There are members of the cast I expected to have main character privileges who were brutally and abruptly murdered throughout the course of the novel. There was a cold sort of reality to his treatment of death (which was one of the themes anyway and probably the point of the whole book) that was due in large part to this abruptness. There are definitely kudos to be had there, because I didn't see most of these deaths coming, and that is definitely something to write home about.

Raven, by Dean Whitlock

I picked up this book at a used book store for maybe two dollars. It turns out it was a two dollars well spent indeed. Raven, by Dean Whitlock, is a fantasy romp through an industrial revolution-adjacent land where the rivers dictate power, the ruling class is composed of land-holding Barons, and magic is stronger the higher you climb into the reaches. Raven is a headstrong girl and a bird mage, hence her nickname, and she is one of the most unwitting heroes I've ever come across, which only adds to her charm, really.

It's worth mentioning that this novel is also one of those rare gems where two out of the three main protagonists identify as women and are noted to be women of color. To see that kind of representation in a stereotypically male and often whitewashed genre is refreshing, in a big way. Equally as important, the characters are really well written. Their slang and curses aren't quite as easily recommendable to everyday speech as Scott Westerfeld's "Barking spiders" and "clever-boots," courtesy of the Leviathan trilogy, but I wouldn't be surprised if I caught myself saying "blazing mages" a time or two.

Another aspect worth noting is that Raven is, technically speaking, the sequel to another of Whitlock's novels, Sky Carver. From what I can tell, Raven also appears in Sky Carver, though not as the main character, and Raven takes place four years after the events of its prequel. That I didn't realize this fact until after I began filling out an entry on Goodreads says a lot. This book stands on its own, which strikes me as both unusual and skillful on Whitlock's part.

If you're a fan of fantasy, mages, ravens, cranky anti-heroes, and steam boats, you should probably give this a read.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Honestly, my mind is still racing to catch up. I haven't devoured a book the way I devoured The Hunger Games since right before fall quarter, the exhausting two-day stint wherein I completed both Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Brom's The Child Thief.

There are a few reasons this parallel came as a surprise. I admit that at first I was a little resistant to reading The Hunger Games, though with 20/20 hindsight it was a foolish reaction. On some level I feared a sort of fiction-following rebound. In the gaping hole that the cinematic conclusion Harry Potter left behind in addition with the fact that the last piece of the Twilight saga is nearly at hand, part of me wondered if the fanatical attention given to Hunger Games wasn't just to fill the massive media vacuum both franchises have and will inevitably leave behind. To some extent I think the Hunger Games film is meant to do just that, but more on that front later.

This resistance was tough to shake, especially when I opened the book and was immediately confronted with not only first-person but also present tense narrative. I have close to no conception why, but either of these on their own is enough to shut me down to a fiction book, let alone both in tandem. As I said, I couldn't tell you why, though if asked I suppose I would answer that something in the cadence of it feels all wrong ninety percent of the time. That being said, just how hooked I was, and in such a short amount of time, is a testament to Suzanne Collins' sheer mastery.

The massive hooks throughout the book, and possibly the best aspect of Collins' writing, consist of tremendous amounts of suspense coupled with extremely visual, imaginative prose. It's little wonder the movie companies couldn't wait to sink their claws into it - turning this into a storyboard would be a piece of cake. Paring it down to the length of a single film? Maybe not so much.

***Now we enter the potential Spoiler zone. Read on at your own risk***

On the subject of the trailer, having watched it now that I'm in the know I completely understand all my friends and acquaintances who claim they're already bracing themselves for disappointment. The casting all along the board seems all wrong, Katniss seems hopelessly toned down, and the visual look of what the audience gets from the meager two minutes of trailer seems listing far off-course from the look and feel of the book. Danger! Here there be monsters!

Which of course comes back to the whole 'divorce the book and the movie so that you don't get mad' business.

My other reservations lie in how self-sufficient this first volume is. Not for a second did the conception even enter my mind that the entire games would be over and dealt with in the first novel. The suspense throughout its entirety was insane - the driving plot to stay alive, to kill or be killed, to keep up a farce in order to earn food and water - but what does that leave? The only remnant from the first novel which will inevitably carry over to the subsequent two is the love-triangle which is hardly even a triangle. I congratulate Collins on the portrayal of a girl who is confused and doesn't know what she wants, thinks, or feels - that she "can't explain how things are...because [she] doesn't know [her]self" (373). But is that really enough to go on for two more books, after the whirl, desperation and brutality of the games? It teeters dangerously close to that media vacuum I mentioned before - worse, the teen-romance portion of the vacuum that verges on the inane. I can only hope this'll be incorporated into that hindsight 20/20 bit.

In all I have my doubts, clearly, but I'm determined to reserve judgment. Suzanne Collins has impressed me once, and done a thorough job of it. I am more than willing to believe that she can do it again.

Interested in purchase? Say no more.