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    Mortal Fire
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    Mortal Fire
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    Mortal Fire
    Ebook426 pages5 hours

    Mortal Fire

    By Elizabeth Knox

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Sixteen-year-old Canny Mochrie's parents go away on a vacation, so they send her off on a trip of her own with her step-brother Sholto and his opinionated girlfriend Susan, who are interviewing the survivors of a strange coal mine disaster and researching local folklore in 1959 Southland, New Zealand. Canny is left to herself to wander in a mysterious and enchanting nearby valley, occupied almost entirely by children who all have the last name Zarene and can perform a special type of magic that tells things how to be stronger and better than they already are. With the help of a seventeen-year-old boy who is held hostage in a hidden away house by a spell that is now more powerful than the people who first placed it, Canny figures out why she, too, can use this special magic that only Zarenes should know, and where she really came from. Printz Honor author Elizabeth Knox has created another stunning world of intrigue in Mortal Fire.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJun 11, 2013
    ISBN9780374388317
    Unavailable
    Mortal Fire
    Author

    Elizabeth Knox

    Elizabeth Knox has published several novels for adults and children, as well as autobiographical novellas. Her acclaimed adult novel The Vintner's Luck (1998) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1999, and was made into a feature film in 2009. In 2008, her YA novel Dreamquake won an American Library Association's Michael L Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature. Elizabeth lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

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    Reviews for Mortal Fire

    4/5

    31 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I first started reading Mortal Fire way back at the beginning of summer, and it was a book that I just immediately took my time with. It's very slow moving at first and full of detail, so it wasn't something that I could just rush through or skim and hope to have any chance of fully digesting what was happening. I got maybe a third of the way through the book and had to put it aside -- not because I didn't enjoy it, but because I had too many other books stacked up to read, and this review was already overdue.

      So many months later, I picked it up again in my effort to get through all the half-read books I've got strewn around my house... and apparently I initially stopped reading Mortal Fire right before things got really good, because I read the last two thirds of the book over the span of a few days, while the first third took about a month. Whoops.

      We spent a lot of time getting to know Canny, her complicated family history and her relationship with her mother, who is somewhat of a local hero from actions taken long before Canny was born. Canny herself is a mathematical genius, but there's a little something more -- sometimes she can see magic written in the air, symbols that no one else can see but which she can sometimes untangle the meaning of. On a summer trip with her step-brother and his girlfriend, Canny finds a place where this magic runs wild. It's here that she meets Ghislain, a mysterious young man who lives by himself, away from the rest of the village. Canny's attempts to learn magic and understand Ghislain's secrets don't go unnoticed by the rest of the village, who are wary of outsiders.

      As I mentioned, this book is slow to start, and things don't really pick up until Canny and Ghislain meet, since it's here that she begins to get a greater understanding of the magic she sees, and also begins to learn some of the secrets of the Zarene Valley and the people who live in it. The relationship that grows between Canny and Ghislain is sweet but a bit strange, for reasons I can't go into because of spoilers. I can't say that I understood all of the magic and mythology that went into creating the story, but it's very beautifully done anyway. You do have to keep reading for a lot of things to pay off -- there are a lot of stories that get told in bits and pieces along the way, so it often takes a while for you to understand the significance of a story or an event that's mentioned.

      Despite being a bit tough to get engaged with at first, this is a very beautifully written story. You spend time getting to know all of the characters, even ones who you don't necessarily think would be important. Don't be afraid to take your time with this one, or put it down and come back to it later, because it does eventually pay off in the end.
    • 2/5
      IN the past year or so I have been reading more and more of what is labeled YA or Junior fiction. The reason for this is that I find some of it is quite good. I have never been a fan of labels, and I am not a fan of labeling books to target specific age groups, either. But I digress. Mortal Fire Hardcover by Elizabeth Knox certainly sounded like it had potential, and lets face it any book does. Any book can be something wonderful. Or not. I'm afraid that I found the many named Canny Mochrie and company were dull. I admit, that there was some story there, but it seemed to me that much of it was hiddun in, under and behind other things. Much like the way that Canny's mind seemed to work. So it is a story of needing to know who (or what, in fact) you are. I get that. Everyone has that need. And if you are something that is either not, or something that is more than human, when that comes up on your adar, it must be even more of a compulsion. Curiosity is a good thing, especially in the young. So I give you this need to know and the compulsion to follow what appeared to be signs leading her to her answers . Here's the thing. I didn't like her. I didn't feel any warmth toward Canny, or Sholto or Cyrus or even Marli. I know that I should have at least felt some sympathy for Marli, and liked her a little. But, no. Sorry Marli. And Sisema? Yikes no. Mean, distant and self centered. No. There was just nothing there to draw me into the story. I didn't like it. I'm sure that there are many who will and to them, a hit tip. That's what reading is all about. We cant all like the same things.
    • 3/5
      I got a copy of this book to review through the Amazon Vine program. This is a hard book to review for me. There were some parts of the book I really enjoyed and other parts that I found to be boring and confusing. This book was an inconsistent read. Some parts were rambling and boring, while other portions were very intriguing and engaging. I almost stopped reading it multiple times and am still uncertain as to whether I enjoyed it or not.The story is set in an alternate New Zealand in the late 1950’s. It follows the story of Canny. Canny is a teenager whose mathematical genius defines her, however she has a lot of trouble getting along with others. When her brother and his fiance decide to travel to a small town for the summer, Canny is sent along to accompany them. While Canny’s brother tries to dig up historical accounts of a tragic mining accident that happened many years ago, Canny explores the Valley. Things are strange in the Valley, for example there is a house that no one but Canny can see. In the valley Canny meets the Zarene family who practice a strange sort of magic. When Canny finds that she too can perform the magic, she is drawn into a story of dark secrets and determined to unravel the mystery of this strange house.As I said this is a tough book for me to review. Some chapters I found boring and confusing and some were incredibly engaging. At points in the book the dialogue and language between characters is very awkward. There were a number of points in the book I had to reread a passage a few times before I could figure out what the author was trying to say. Some of the dialogue is so awkward that I ended up thinking maybe Know did it that way on purpose; but it was awkward in an inconsistent way (not with just one character, but sporadically throughout the book). It was almost like parts of the book were written by different people.Canny is an interesting character but hard to engage with. She is a genius of sorts, and has a lot of trouble interacting with others. She breaks even the most basic things (locations, colors, poems) into a mathematical way of thinking. This results in her being lonely and curious, but her lack of emotional engagement with the world makes her hard to like. When she does show emotion it comes off as distant and stiff.The most interesting character in the book is the young man Canny meets in the strange house, Ghislain. He has a mysterious past and is an intriguing character. Throughout the book his interactions with Canny come off as a bit dreamlike, awkward, and disjointed. Still I was intrigued by his mystery and why he was trapped in that house.Canny and Ghislain have a romance of sorts, but that also came off as a bit awkward for me. They didn’t have much chemistry together and the “romance” comes off as a bit creepy at times. I did enjoy how this world in the Valley was both part of and removed from our world. I enjoyed the magic system of runes. I also enjoyed the somewhat peaceful and dreamline quality to the writing. The book wraps up fairly well too.Overall this was a mixed read for me. I enjoyed the magic and Canny’s genius. I enjoyed the mystery behind Zarene Valley and behind the character of Ghislain. I also enjoyed the interesting asides into mining and the mining disasters. However the writing was awkward and alternated between engaging, confusing, and boring. It was just very inconsistent. The conversations between characters felt forced and awkward. The romance between Canny and Ghislain is sudden and a bit creepy. The pacing of the story is also a bit off; parts are incredibly engaging and parts are wandering and boring. Honestly I can’t really recommend this as a good fantasy read. If you really have your heart set on reading this I would recommend reading the first chapter of the book...it’s one of the most awkward parts of the book...if you can get through that and enjoy it then you will probably enjoy the rest of the book. If that chapter bothers you, then the rest of the book will most likely bother you as well.
    • 4/5
      MORTAL FIRE was different than anything else I can remember reading. I almost didn't finish this one. I thought that the beginning had a glacially slow pace and was incredibly confusing. The author's note at the beginning told me that it took place in 1959 and in a world that was similar to ours but had some magical differences. Just a few pages in, I was longing for an "infodump." An infodumps is a term that I have heard mostly in science fiction. It is where one character tells another the essential background information that the reader needs to understand what is happening. As it is, I was floundering. I couldn't tell if the disconnect I was feeling was because I didn't understand the world or if it was cultural or if it was because of the viewpoint character. Canny Mochrie was portrayed as a math genius who didn't interact well with others and who usually had a blank, expressionless face. She was socially isolated because her best, and only, friend had contracted polio and was in the hospital in an iron lung. Canny was also isolated because she was from one of the native tribes rather than of European descent which made her a member of a minority group. Her stepfather is a college professor and her mother's great claim to fame is that she rescued some downed British airmen during World War II and brought them to safety by taking them over 500 miles in an outrigger canoe. Her heroics at the age of seventeen (or so) made her a national heroine. Canny feels lost in the overpowering shadow her mother casts. The pace of the story picks up when Canny travels with her older stepbrother Sholto and his girlfriend Susan to the Zarene Valley where Sholto is doing some research for his father. While Sholto interviews survivors of a 1929 coal mining disaster, Canny explores. She has always been able to see something "extra" which also made her different. Once she comes to the valley, she sees that extra which the residents use to perform magic. She quickly picks up the language and the gesturing needed to do the spells. Her exploration also leads her to a house the magically repairs and renews itself and the seventeen-year-old boy who has been imprisoned there since 1929. I think that the pace picked up for me because Canny was not the only viewpoint character. We also got Ghislaine's, the imprisoned boy, viewpoint and some of Sholto's viewpoint and the viewpoint of some of the adults in the Zarene Valley. The story was very complex. It requires a reader who will get involved enough in the story to concentrate and keep the various plot threads untangled. Since, at one point in the story, Canny's spirit travels in time, this isn't always easy to do. Persistent readers will enjoy the challenge.