The Fire: A Novel [Paperback]

I remember reading THE EIGHT when I was in graduate school and had enjoyed it immensely. On the strength of that experience I was fooled repeatedly into buying the next three books of Katherine Neville. All were flops. This one shall be the last because as the sequel to THE EIGHT, it was the most bitter disappointment. I promise to explain this with no spoilers.

First off, the writer either finds fact-verification a boring chore or holds little respect for historic facts - especially when in conflict with one of her irrelevant tangents she runs on off. Allow me to offer a couple of case in points.

The trend is set early on: the Greek city of Ioannina (named after St John or Ioannis) is misnamed "Janina" only to be very tenuously linked later on with the Roman God Janus (one of the few Roman Gods with ...no Greek roots mind you!).
The city is located in the region of Epirus (I vacationed in Parga recently and visited Ioannina, only 60 miles away) whose old borders extent well into southern Albania. Thus, setting the location as "Janina, Albania" manages to contain two mistakes in two words. If she were trying to refer to the borders of the time of narration she should had written: "Ioannina, the Ottoman Empire". Albania was not independent until 1912 - and certainly NOT in the 1820's.

Ali Pasha was NOT an independent ruler as she goes on later. He was a shrewd and very able strategist, Muslim of Albanian origin, who was awarded the Pashilik [~local Governor] of Epirus under the Ottoman rule. When the Greeks fired off their Independence War in 1821 he tried to carve a kingdom for himself. His rebellion was thwarted after much effort by the Ottoman Turks who eventually had to assassinate him.

And if the book contains so many wrong facts about European history I am familiar with, one could only imagine what is going on with the less known and documented Middle-East history! Suspension of disbelief to enjoy a work of fiction is one thing. Bootstrapping made up "facts" to give credence to a bad work of fiction quite another. And the mistakes do not end here.

The writer for some reason even gets her basic gematria wrong: 888 may indeed be the gematria of God but 666 is...not the one of Man. Instead, 666 is the number occultists associate with the Devil. Man's number is traditionally 777 which falls "in between in a dualistic fashion.

As Neville herself put it in page 364, these are " stories [] that all appeared to be large souffles of inflated mythology, sparsely sprinkled with a cherry-picking of facts". I couldn't put it better myself!

Unfortunately, historic and numerological inaccuracies are the least of this novels' problems. In the acknowledgments Neville thanks her editor for reminding her "not to rest on her backstory". She should had taken his advice - because she did exactly that!
This is a very similar story with THE EIGHT - only (unnecessarily) more convoluted. It adds nothing to the original story: is it just rearranging the furniture. And the new arrangement is simply not working.
The main character is the most confused of them all and makes obvious blunders and idiotic mistakes. For a chess GrandMaster she sure comes across too Forrest-Gumpy!
The plot is paper thin and predictable. Like playing chess with a 6-year old. Obvious questions never get to be asked; conversations either stop abruptly or go into unrelated topics; and characters keep changing sides. Quick reminder Katherine: in chess one knows what color he or she is playing with from the very beginning - and the pieces do NOT change color. That is probably checkers you are confusing this with.

I had to become so frustrated with a book wasting my time ever since her MAGIC CIRCLE.

My advice to Neville: should you be inclined to continue publishing, hire back the editor (or, who are we kidding by now, the ghost-writer) who created THE EIGHT.

My advice to anyone else: Avoid. A HUGE disappointment.

This novel will keep your interest however don't expect a great ending after all of that suspenceful hopping back and forth in time. I was very disappointed in the way Neville ties up the story at the end. I was expecting more, although she had the same problem with The Eight. Great build up, leading to a lame finish.

How do you write a sequel to an astonishing work of imagination like The Eight? Very carefully . . . as witnessed by the long delay between the original and the sequel. But perhaps not carefully enough as judged by the challenges of inserting new meaning into well developed material in The Eight.

The Fire has to be seen as a sequel. As a stand-alone novel, the references to The Eight weigh down the book for a new reader in ways that would make the book almost impenetrable . . . and obscure at the same time.

Time has moved forward into the post-Second Iraq War period, creating a balance with the OPEC-related story lines in The Eight. As she did in The Eight, Katherine Neville has also moved back in time to create historical stories that march into the present time. These story lines cross in powerful ways.

The book opens as Aleksandr Solarin accompanies his daughter, Alexandra ("Xie"), to Zagorsk Monastery in Russia for a pivotal chess match in the autumn of 1993 where she will have a chance to earn grandmaster status at the tender age of eleven. While there, Aleksandr spots something that shouldn't be there . . . and it becomes clear that the Game he had sought to end years before has begun again.

You then travel to Albania in 1822 to meet Haidee, a pasha's daughter, who uncovers a sneak attack by Turkish forces on her father. Will she escape its consequences?

From there, the scene shifts to Mesa Verde in Colorado in the spring of 2003 as Alexandra arrives to visit for her mother's (Cat Velis) birthday party to discover that her mother missing, many puzzle clues, and an odd assortment of visitors arriving for the party. Clearly, these people seem to be positioning themselves for the Game. What is Alexandra's role?

Much of the story's charm come from comic appearances involving Lily Rad and adventures involving Alexandra's highly competent friend Key. The historical backdrop is enlivened by the character of Lord Byron who becomes a significant figure in the story.

For those who loved The Eight, The Fire presents a challenge in that it puts a new perspective on that story. Some will see the new aspects as enriching the original story line. Others won't agree.

Like The Eight, I found the ending to be an anticlimax that didn't live up to the rest of the story. This story has a drawback that The Eight didn't have, it often moves very slowly. Much of the book is taken up with locating Alexandra's mother. Characters are also assessed in a few too many ways for my taste in terms of what roles they might be playing in the Game.

If I hadn't read The Eight, I'm not sure I would have finished The Fire. The new stories didn't grip me nearly as much with emotion as the old ones did in The Eight.

If you have read The Eight, I think you should read The Fire . . . if for no other reason than being able to write a review of it where you can assess how it compares to the original novel.