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Epicurus.com - The Fire: A Novel
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List Price: $26.00
Our Price: $17.16
Your Save: $ 8.84 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345500670
ISBN: 0345500679
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 451
Publication Date: 2008-10-14
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2008-10-14
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: THE FIRE
2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with them the secrets of the power that comes with possessing it. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed clues, followed swiftly by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious assortment of houseguests, indicates that something sinister is afoot.Â
When she inadvertently discovers from her aunt, the chess grandmaster Lily Rad, that the most powerful piece of Charlemagne’s service has suddenly resurfaced and the Game has begun again, Alexandra is swept into a journey that takes her from Colorado to the Russian wilderness and at last into the heart of her own hometown: Washington D.C.
1822, Albania: Thirty years after the French Revolution, when the chess service was unearthed, all of Europe hovers on the brink of the War of Greek Independence. Ali Pasha, the most powerful ruler in the Ottoman Empire, has angered the sultan and is about to be attacked by Turkish forces. Now he sends the only person he can rely upon–his young daughter, Haidee–on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania, through the mountains and over the sea, to the hands of the one man who might be able to save it.
Haidee’s journey from Albania to Morocco to Rome to Greece, and into the very heart of the Game, will result in revelations about the powerful chess set and its history that will lead at last to the spot where the service was first created more than one thousand years before: Baghdad.
Blending exquisite prose and captivating history with nonstop suspense, Neville again weaves an unforgettable story of peril, action, and intrigue.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Could not finish this one!
Comment: Having enjoyed reading the 'Eight' a few years ago, I was really prepared to loce this book. It really was very much below expectations! At the end I gave up and quit. The prose is eratic, the plot is tangled and weak. There are holes everywhere, and leaps which are not really justified. This makes reading very tiring. All in all, this is not a book I would reccomend to anyone. Got two stars only in view of the potential of the author as justified by her previous books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This Fire lacks spark
Comment: Like so many others, I loved The Eight, which I bought on a whim when it first came out. I too looked forward to reading The Fire when I saw Neville had written a sequel. If only she hadn't. The Fire lacks everything that made The Eight so mesmerizing. Not one of the characters is interesting, there is no actual mystery, there is no cohesion to what little plot there is, and Neville ought to look up the word "replete" before she ever (mis)uses it again. I kept going, hoping for the story to get interesting. It never happened. Shame on Neville's publishers!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Better Left Without a Sequel
Comment: A sequel to a breakout novel must be better than the first and THE FIRE BY Katherine Neville isn't that strong a book. I'd missed THE EIGHT the first time around and bought the two as companion volumes.
Too much detail and too contrived, while the characters stumbled around as if they had no purpose. The details and history were fascinating, but those elements can not carry a weak story line.
Character wise it was a case of miscasting -- the daughter wasn't as strong as the mother and all the supporting characters we've loved were lost in the background without contributing to the plot. Wonder what happened to the uncle?
Sorry, but though an interesting read, the book should never have been written. Classics should never have sequels.
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and HAINTS now available on Amazon Kindle.
Customer Rating:
Summary: You can have my copy - cheap!
Comment: The Fire was a complete disappointment as far as I'm concerned. Although I didn't expect it to be as good as The Eight, I also didn't expect anything this awful. I truly hated the overuse of middle eastern and other italicized words throughout the story, followed by explanation of same. Characters were underdeveloped and many were silly (more like caricatures), plot lines wandered and often were not plausible, attempted "action scenes" were weak, sub plots were not resolved, and the ending was among the most unsatisfying of any I can remember. To me it seemed like the author got bored and just wanted to finish the darn thing to get it off her desk. The Fire is not a worthy sequel to a book as fine as The Eight.
Customer Rating:
Summary: DaVinci Code - NOT!
Comment: Katherine Neville was a fantastic author that could inspire me to heightened interest in history that I never thought possible. However, she has hit a snag in her ability to communicate. This book is an embarrasment. The use of "clever" codes and clues is sophmoric and non-stimulating. Actually the worst part for me was that I kept reading instead of trashing the book. The ending was so bad that I woke up my spouse just to complain about it. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME on this book.
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