The Fire's Stone

“My sword, your brains, and her talent...that wizard with the stone doesn't stand a chance.”

I knew I'd like this book. This is the fourth Tanya Huff book I've read (though those were all sci-fi) and I loved the previous three, so I knew I'd like this book. I just didn't expect to adore it quite as much as I do.

Besides loving Huff's other books, and wanting to read her fantasy work, I also have been wanting to try reading some LGBTQA friendly fantasy. The romance in this book totally fits - and it's not the focus of the story. So, yay! (As an added bonus, Huff herself falls somewhere on the LGBTQA spectrum.)

And there is also lots of non-stereotypical gender roles. I mean, I know I've gotten so used to the guards being all men that it's a bit of a surprise - and that's just sad - when you have a squad that's mostly women. Or a girl as a page instead of a boy. No fuss is made over this, but it's still very nice to see.

Unsurprisingly, the characters in this book is what totally makes it for me. They are all wonderfully flawed, imperfect people and they are so beautiful because of it. Each character starts out being a little...awkward. None of the three really know how to have friends.

One of the guys, especially, tends to shut down if people get too curious about him or if he thinks they expect too much. And the girl has pretty much no social skills and has the tendency to ask too many questions. Most of the character development comes in the form of them becoming something more than a means to an end for each other.

Which is why the plot works perfectly.

A mystical stone (the titular ‘Fire's Stone) that is protecting a city/state is stolen and two of our heroes are tasked with retrieving it - with the third one just deciding to take up the mission as well.

The plot is fairly straight forward, kind of a quest type plot, and it opens up the book to lots of character development because through most of the story, these three people are traveling together and have no one else to rely on.

The world building is - there? I mean, if something is important to the plot, you learn about it. But if it's not, it's not really brought into focus. Which, I love. I mean, I love fantasy books so heavy world building is kind of expected. This book though, it doesn't have all the extraneous details.

They travel on a ship - but instead of that being an opportunity to describe what the ship looks like, it's layout, the construction of it and its entire history since the wood was just little sprouts, (okay, I exaggerate - but not by much) the ship is just that. A ship.

So, beyond characters that were flawed and wormed their way into my heart immediately, this book was a nice change of pace from the heavy world building fantasy.

(Originally posted on my blog: pagesofstarlight.blogspot.com)

I came into The Fire's Stone very excited with inflated expectations because I've been on a fantasy kick and when I first heard about this book sounded like it would hit all the right notes for me. Let me preface this by saying I didn't hate the book. I liked the message, I liked how the three mains played off of each other, and it had some solid writing.

That being said, my main issue with the entire story was that it was too simplistic. The world-building was barebones, the characters (even the 3 mains) seemed slightly underdeveloped, the plot and writing style were both equally basic, as in nothing new or innovative was done with the story.

More nitpicks include:

The cuts between scenes are so abrupt. The passage of time isn't the clearest. I always feel as though I missed a scene that happened offscreen.

The story is told in third person perspective but it shifts very often even within the same paragraph or consecutive paragraphs from one character to another so it's very hard to keep track of who's eyes we're seeing through at any given moment.

There were so many interesting concepts that Huff introduced that I feel like could've added so much depth had she given them more time and attention such as:
1. The Nine Gods Pantheon (and the rest of the religious systems in this world tbh)
2. The mechanics of the magic system they use
3. The different cultures of all these different countries in their world.
4. Locations and geography of the world (architecture styles, landscapes, climates, languages etc.)

Maybe I've been spoiled by all the other great fantasy stories I read last year that anything less than the standards Le Guin, Hobb, and Lynch have set are disappointing to me.

Lastly, this is very much a young adult story and I can definitively state that this is the book that made me realise that maybe I've grown out of the genre.