The Fire - Katherine Neville

2008; 441 pages. Sequel to "The Eight", which is reviewed here. Genre : Cospiracy Fiction. Overall Rating : 3*/10.

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21-year-old Alexandra "Xie" Solarin returns to her mother's Colorado lodge for a birthday celebration, only to find that her mom, "Cat" Velis, has flown the coop, but has left some intriguing puzzles as clues. The next round of "The Game" has begun, and like it or not, Alexandra finds that she is an integral part of it.

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What's To Like...

The Fire has the same structure as The Eight. There are two interwoven storylines; one set in the present (2003, actually); the other set in 1822, in various countries around the Mediterranean Sea.

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Once again, there are some cool settings - Italy, the Rocky Mountains, Morocco, the Alaska-Russia border, and Albania. When's the last time you read a book set in Albania? There are lots of historical references, some kewl French phrases (always a plus for me), and even a romance or two. As in The Eight, Neville does a lot of name-dropping (Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Thomas Jefferson, Tallyrand, Alexander Dumas, to name a few), but I like that.

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Alas, it's what's missing that pulls down the score. First and foremost - a lack of action. We spend 430 pages fleeing from danger with Xie. But said danger doesn't make an appearance until there's only 10 pages to go. And the relatively wimpy threat devolves into an unsatisfying ending.

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The1822 storyline suffers similarly. Early on, our heroine is in a castle, and the Ottoman Turk enemies are literally breaking down the doors to the room. Haidee, accompanied by a lone warder, has to flee the castle, make her way through the beseiging Turkish army lines, board a waiting ship and flee to Italy. But once at sea, pirates attack the ship, and all aboard are taken as slaves to Morocco. The warder escapes, but Haidee is put in the Sultan's harem, Until he dies, when she is auctioned off as a slave.

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Well, that certainly sounds like action, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's all in the background. At the end of one chapter, Haidee is told to flee the castle. At the start of the next, she's in the harem preparing to be demoted. How boring.

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There are lots of twists, but they never seem to go anywhere. And although the chess motif is again present, it becomes evident Ms. Neville doesn't play. "I picked up the kinght and put it on d4. I was still looking at the board some moments later when I realized that Vartan hadn't yet made his opening move." (pg. 397). Um, yeah. Just one problem. It isn't possible to play Nd4 as White's first move. Sloppy, sloppy.
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Kewl New Words...

Analemma : the figure-eight path that you'd see if you took photos of the sun from the exact same place at the exact same time over the course of a year. Penury : a state of poverty. Pourboire : A small amount of money given for services rendered. Hermeneutics : the study of the theory of interpretation (usually "scriptural"). Oh yeah, Factotum appeared again. I'm being stalked by that word.

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Excerpts...

Eremon always called Rodo "E.B." for "Eredolf Boujaron", a Basque "in" joke that he'd shared with Leda and me on one of our very late ciderfest nights. Apparently there are no names or words in Basque that begin with R : hence Eremon's name - Ramon in Spanish, Raymond in French. And Rodolfo seemed almost Italian. This linguistic flaw would seem to make Rodo something of a Basque Basqtard. (pg. 168)

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The attendant shook his head and pointed upstream, toward Washington, D.C. The man with the shades reached in his jacket and pulled out a phone.

I had that sinking feeling. We were out here in the middle of the river on an open boat, like a crate of eggplants awaiting delivery. (pg. 311)

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I am ashes where once I was fire,

And the bard in my bosom is dead,

What I loved I now merely admire -

And my heart is as gray as my head. (Lord Byron, and pg. 321).

In the end, the negatives outweigh the positives. This is not a stand-alone book. You have to read The Eight first, and alas, The Fire pales in comparison to that.

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I can only give it three stars. OTOH, the co-worker who originally turned me on to The Eight, also read The Fire, and felt that they both were equally good. So maybe its just me.

The Eight - Katherine Neville

1988, 598 pages. Genre : Historical Action; Cri-Fi (Crichton Fiction). Overall Rating : B.

   .Two intertwined stories, one set in the 1970's; the other in the 1790's. The modern tale centers around Catherine "Cat" Velis, a computer geek who's about to be transferred to Algiers due to office politics. The older tale is set primarily in France, and follows Mereille de Remy, a novice nun whose cloistered life is about to be upended by the infamous Reign of Terror. Both women soon find themselves trying to collect all the pieces to an ancient, mystical, rumored-to-be-all-powerful chess set that is also coveted by the bad guys.

.What's To Like...
    The emphasis is on the storyline, which is complex, but not confusing. There is the central theme of chess, which has been a lifelong passion of mine. A lot of the book takes place in Algeria, which is a nice change of scenery. Some attention even is paid to the etymology of "Car". As in "Carthage" and "Hamilcar". Kewlness.
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There are plenty of twists in the storyline to keep you on your toes. Telling the good guys from the bad guys is quite the challenge. Both Mereille and Cat are strong female leading characters. (Well, the queens are the strongest pieces on the chessboard.) Indeed, there really aren't any weak women in the book. Amazingly, the men aren't pansies either.
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Last but not least - there's even some romance. Enough to appeal to women readers, but not enough to lose me.

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Quibbles...
You are reminded a few too many times that there's a "bigger game" being played. And there's too much "telegraphing" with sentences like "Little did I know that thirty blocks away, a move was about to take place that would soon alter the course of my life." (page 130).

.Once in a while the plot gets clunky. For example, at one point Cat is being chased by a host of gun-shooting baddies, and is forced to jump off a pier into the Mediterranean. Alas (sez you), she has a knapsack of valuables to weigh her down, including a priceless ancient book. Lucky for her, that book just happens to be in a waterproof container (in a desert?), and she uses the weight of the knapsack to walk (underwater) along the bottom of the pier to safety, whilst the baddies wait for her to surface at the end of the pier to shoot her. Yeah. I don't think so.

.But these are minor. My biggest peeve with The Eight is the printing. A lot of the "e's" have their cross-bar missing, making them look like "c's". So your reading gets interrupted by things like trcc, pcacc, crcatc, ctc.

."It's a great huge game of chess that's being played all over the world....Oh what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them. I wouldn't mind being a pawn, if only I might join - though of course I should like to be a Queen best." (Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking Glass)

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This is a well-researched book. I can attest to that re the Chess parts. Some critics were turned off by the name-dropping. But I'd much rather read about Napoleon, William Blake, and Robespierre than some unknown commoner. That's what historical fiction is all about.

.Others didn't like the ending, but I disagree. I won't put any spoilers here; so let's just say the ending was similar to, yet better than, that of The Da Vinci Code.

.I recommend this to anyone who likes to read Dan Brown and Michael Crichton, neither of which has put out anything new lately. Yeah I know, Crichton's dead, but that doesn't stop Robert Ludlum. This was Ms. Neville's first published book, so the quibbles are quite forgiveable. She's written a half dozen or so since then, including (15 years later) the sequel to this story, called The Fire. I'm sure I'll be reading it sometime soon.