Customer Reviews

Secrets Of The Fire Sea

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Stephen Hunt is one of the best fantasy novelists of his generation, mixing popular adventure with deeper themes with such aplomb that you can't help but wonder why none of his books have walked off with any of the major awards yet.

In Secrets of the Fire Sea, the book's central figures include some new characters such as Jethro Daunt, consulting detective, and a young islander, Hannah Conquest, as well as some old favorites such as Commodore Black, privateer, u-boat captain and general all-round rogue.

There's great mischief at work on the Isle of Jago, mostly involving the atheist church of the people of the kingdom that has featured indirectly in some of the earlier novels. It's the sly take on religion that puts me in mind of The Name of the Rose, as well as some of the magic realists who write around similar themes.

The plot is totally absorbing and the novel deserves all five stars.

With engaging characters, rich descriptions and a world that puts me in mind of some of the strangeness of China Mieville's novels, Secrets of the Fire Sea delves into the exploits of the Kingdom of Jackals' greatest detective, one Jethro Daunt and his assistant, an artificial intelligence stuck in a very ramshackle robot body.

Jethro is taken away from the kingdom, sent by the rational inquisition of the nation's atheist religion to investigate some superstitious goings-on on the island of Jago, which has retained a lot more technology than the other countries of Hunt's fallen far-future Earth, mainly due to an abundance of volcanic-driven electricity.

The atmosphere took me straight back to when I first read Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa (the Name of the Rose, also made into a film with Sean Connery), and is of a similar quality, with the added twist that the setting for this is pure fantasy.

Film director's note, this book is crying out to be made into a decent movie! As it is, though, it is a far more than decent book.

When it comes to bringing his worlds to life, Stephen Hunt is up there with Frank Herbert and Dune, or Tolkien and Middle Earth, and it's clear he loves packing them full of intrigue and adventure - which is lucky, because that's what I enjoy reading too!

Secrets of the Fire Sea is another fine addition to the series which Hunt started with The Court of the Air, and this book shows how far he has come on as a writer since he started out. Every page is layered with twists and he can really make you care about his characters more than any other writer active in the fantasy genre today.

The strengths of this book are what Hunt's strengths have always been, thought-provoking concepts and good old fashioned, great dialogue and a plot that is to die for (quite literally, as this novel steers effortlessly into detective fiction territory).

As an author, Stephen Hunt reawakened my love for the fantasy novel, which had been bumping along with stilted-quest-after-quest for far too long until he struck the genre.

After having read a few fantasy duds recently, it was with great relief that I came across Secrets of the Fire Sea ' a genuinely exciting novel with extra helpings of adventure and shrewd writing laced with sardonic twists and turns across almost every chapter.

From the start there is a strong undercurrent maneuvering the plot away from just lightweight potboilerage and into the deeper currents of a true thriller. Nominally it a detective story set in post-disaster Earth, with Hunt creating one of the abiding heroes of speculative fiction' Jethro Daunt, defrocked parson of a godless church, and his robot side-kick.

Actually, it is far more than that, as if Ian McEwan had accepted a bet to write a JK Rowling novel.

Secrets of the Fire Sea is not just good, it is brilliant with seriously excellent characters with a talent for taking a complex future world and turning it into an easy to read adventure.

One of the finest books I have read in a long time.

Secrets of the Fire Sea is the fourth book set in the utterly brilliant Jackelian world, its adventures fixed in the far future where the passing of the ages have erased almost all trace of the world we know today (and various disasters and dark ages have knocked humanity back to a Victorian level of technology).

For me, Secrets of the Fire Sea works both as a riveting fantasy adventure or a great thriller, and the novel is one of Hunt's best so far in my opinion. It is a compelling book with a number of interesting characters, particularly consulting detective and ex-priest, Jethro Daunt and his steamman man servant and side-kick, Boxiron.

Rather than the Jackelian kingdom, the action for this novel switches to the Isle of Jago, a haunted, blasted colony locked inside the Fire Sea of the title. I especially love the way the book blends fantasy and science fiction and the way the plot builds to an explosive climax, leaving me wanting more.

'Secrets' is part of a brilliant series which I haven't been able to put down - so much so, I can't wait for Hunt's 5th novel to hit the bookstores.

As far as the story of Secrets of the Fire Sea is concerned, it's high on intrigue, action and adventure ' written almost as a crime mystery, but with the usual fantasy backdrop of the Jackelian universe (for those not in the know, that's an Earth set very far in the future: deprived of resources, with a retro-primitive vibe going on, alongside the odd flash of higher science from earlier ages).

The main characters are Jethro Daunt, a detective, and his mechanical manservant, Boxiron. They have to accept a case on an island continent surrounded by a sea of magma, involving politics and religion ' a heady mix at the best of the time. I can't praise this novel highly enough. It has wonderful characters, the whole thing is beautifully written with an engaging and witty story. This would make a great TV series ' either live action or anime-style. All in all, it's amazing fun and a must read.

One of the best books I have ever read for quite a while... the kind of adventure story that worms its way into your mind and keeps on clawing at your eyeballs until the last page is turned. Secret of the Fire Sea's writing style and story structure has obviously been meticulously planned and executed, with the build up of suspense ratcheting ever higher until the end (which may - spoiler warning - upset those of a religious bent). Brilliant characters and an imagination to match. I cannot wait for Jethro Daunt, consulting detective, to ride again.

Another indescribably great fantasy novel from the pen of writer Stephen Hunt. This one takes us far away from the lands we've seen in the previous three novels and out to a dark isle in the middle of a boiling sea of magma, called Jago. It's a blend of epic fantasy, dark future and a touch of steampunk with a set of realistic and complex characters, including a consulting detective - one Jethro Daunt - and said detective's robot assistant, Boxiron.

I won't give too much away about the plot of Secrets of the Fire Sea, save that it has some really great dialogue and lives up to the previous three works of Hunt, and - to me - reads like a wildly fast paced fantasy take on The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A book not to be missed at any cost!

As a fantasy novel, Secrets of the Fire Sea shows an astoundingly adroit control of language with a wide range of cleverly crafted characters (almost too wide at times - my one crit. of this book).

At times demented, the assured plot is seething with cleverness - a dark detective for a dark future, haunted by what he's witnessed and comforted only by a tin man (okay, a steamman - this is a Stephen Hunt novel). The prose is at times dense, but never less that buzzing with ideas and imagination. Most of it circles around murders in an atheist cathedral on a volcanic hell-hole of an island called Jago, so far in the future you might as be in the past.

Into this mix is thrown such solid protagonists as a submarine pirate on the make, a lost ward of the atheist church, and some missing archaeologists who were far too close to the secret of the title to be allowed to survive (and everything beyond this is heading into spoiler territory).

With such fantastical ideas and an exhilarating plot tossed across every page, Secrets of the Fire Sea is better than the majority of the genre and deserves to become an instant classic.

Secrets of the Fire Sea is, without exaggeration, one of the all time greats of the fantasy genre' striking all the right buttons for me as a reader. Evocative plot? Check. Fantastically original world? Check. Wide breadth of underpinnings beyond pulp adventure despite being pulp adventure? Check.

There is a brilliantly realized tension here between the unconventional and the genre tropes, which are handled with an aplomb that is not easy to find in the field today.

One the one hand it is a fantasy adventure, a genre replete with the garbage of identikit plot lines, on the other it takes almost all of the tropes of fantasy, stick a rocket to them, and lets fire with a wild madness that is truly exhilarating to behold.

Imagine JRR Tolkien writing noir fiction in a world created as a collaboration between Charles Dickens and Neil Gaiman, and you have some feel for what to find between the pages of this novel. Part scifi, part fantasy, part steampunk, but all brilliant