I’m afraid I’ve gone and done things out of order. Again. I read  Kristin Cashore’s Fire as soon as I could get my hands on it, but I have not read Graceling (yet). Apparently Fire is a bit of a prequel, set 30 or so years before the events of Graceling, with one crossover character.

I thought Fire rocked.

Now, with that out of the way, Fire is a very intriguing book, different from anything else I have read. It takes place in a war-torn land called the Dells. Fire, a young 17 year old girl, is the last human shaped monster. The land is rife with beautiful creatures called monsters: birds, cats, lizards, etc. but they have gorgeously colored feathers, fur, and scales. And they have the power to control the minds of humans.

Fire is stunning beautiful, so beautiful that people (men especially) can forget themselves and proclaim their love for her, resulting in small scale battles, violence, etc. You get the idea. Unlike animal monsters, Fire has morals that she lives by and so does not abuse her powers, often keeping her fiery red hair under wraps. And so Fire lives in her own little corner of the world, until the day her King needs her. What happens after Fire leaves her comfortable niche is  a stunning story with love, war, and everything in between.

What made this book really interesting is that we don’t meet Fire for several chapters into the book. Instead, we meet a little boy with different colored eyes and his father, who leaves his home so that his boy (a Graceling because of his telltale eyes) will not be taken away for the King’s personal use. Those first few chapters are chilling. This boy is everything that Fire is not. While he wants to get to know Fire, she wants nothing to do with him, and so Fire finds herself in the center of a disastrous plot.

Miss Cashore does an excellent job driving home that even though Fire is considered “monstrous”, she is still human at heart. Her love of her horse, Small, is so innocent and girlish that it makes the reader smile. Fire also has a difficult time removing herself from the shadow of her monster father, adviser to the old king. Her father was the cause of much dissension in the kingdom, and many people hate Fire simply because of the deeds of her father. Poor Fire has to navigate through a dangerous castle with people that either hate her, or love her because of her overpowering looks.

Fire is an excellent read, though at one point I felt as though almost every character was the victim or participant in rape, adultery, or some other deviant behavior. Members of the royal family turn out to have not-so-royal lineage, and it gave the characters a soap opera-like air. Otherwise, the writing and worldbuilding were excellent, and I plan to read Graceling very soon, followed by Bitterblue, which does not currently have a release date.