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Elizabeth K.'s Reviews > The Fire
The Fire (The Eight, #2)
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I have very mixed feelings about this, it's the sequel to The Eight. It's the kind of sequel where you very much have to have read the first book, it wouldn't stand alone very well at all. Now, I almost always like a sequel AT LEAST in the sense that I like to know what happens to everyone after. Sometimes I have heard people, when talking about a favorite book, claim that it's better NOT to know, that a sequel would only ruin things. That, my friends, is the talk of crazy people. So on the one hand, I was glad to catch up with the characters from The Eight again, although I was also a little disappointed that for them, overall, life after the events of The Eight was ... well, mostly a bummer.
To set the stage, The Eight is about the hunt for a mysterious ancient chess set, told in two stories: one search taking place around the time of the French Revolution, and the other in the 1970s. The Fire is the next generation of chess set seekers.
One of the things I liked the best about The Eight is that it was a good mix between adventure (which I found very suspenseful and engaging) and the rather new age-y story about the significance of the chess set (which I was not overly interested in, but whatever). In The Fire, the scales have tipped in favor of the mystical, and the adventure took a backseat. I was half-way though the book when I realized the characters hadn't even GONE anywhere yet, and then they ended up going to Washington D.C., which is where my class went on its 8th grade field trip so it doesn't seem to me to be an overly exotic destination. And because I am a nitpicky annoying person, I was also peeved that there were a few places where the plot turned on points that seem to be contradictory to the parameters set up in the first book about how the chess game worked.
Despite all of that, I found myself liking the ultimate resolution of the fate of the centuries old chess game. Odd that I wasn't overly impressed by how the author got the characters to that point, though.
Grade: Meh
Recommended: If you are a big fan of The Eight you will probably find this hard to resist.
2008/41
To set the stage, The Eight is about the hunt for a mysterious ancient chess set, told in two stories: one search taking place around the time of the French Revolution, and the other in the 1970s. The Fire is the next generation of chess set seekers.
One of the things I liked the best about The Eight is that it was a good mix between adventure (which I found very suspenseful and engaging) and the rather new age-y story about the significance of the chess set (which I was not overly interested in, but whatever). In The Fire, the scales have tipped in favor of the mystical, and the adventure took a backseat. I was half-way though the book when I realized the characters hadn't even GONE anywhere yet, and then they ended up going to Washington D.C., which is where my class went on its 8th grade field trip so it doesn't seem to me to be an overly exotic destination. And because I am a nitpicky annoying person, I was also peeved that there were a few places where the plot turned on points that seem to be contradictory to the parameters set up in the first book about how the chess game worked.
Despite all of that, I found myself liking the ultimate resolution of the fate of the centuries old chess game. Odd that I wasn't overly impressed by how the author got the characters to that point, though.
Grade: Meh
Recommended: If you are a big fan of The Eight you will probably find this hard to resist.
2008/41
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
September 5, 2008
–
Finished Reading
July 31, 2009
– Shelved
July 31, 2009
– Shelved as:
2008-new-reads
