Review – Fire Study

Fire Study (Study #3)

by Maria V. Snyder (Mira books 2008)

Well, this series wrapped up nicely, except that Yelena, while impetuous and running on gut instinct really isolates herself from her friends and family in this one.  She is a jerk and events move so quickly I didn’t follow some of the minor story lines and glances and hurts that happened.  She is very young and it shows.  This is another strong character who wants to do all the dangerous stuff herself to keep everyone safe.  It simply succeeds in pissing everyone who cares about her off and lets the bad side prey on them for their lack of unity.

Crazy!  But, I do like her ultimately, and the characters have really grown on me. Valek and Moon Man and even Roze is interesting though we don’t get enough of her background for my liking.  There isn’t that much romance, she is with her guy and they are fairly solid.  They get together, but they did in the other books as well and there is minimal lead up and then a fade to black when they spend the night together.

There are a lot of things that need to be tied up in this book.  Don’t expect to go where you think you will go, but on an adventure you will be (do I sound like Yoda there?)  There is a ton of action, bad guys aplenty, good guys, people die, things wrap up and Yelena figures herself out a bit more.  My favorite was the first in the series but the rest have been quite good as well.  Basically, I couldn’t put it down the entire time I was reading it, so that says something right there.   It does get confusing a bit, basically the mystical woo woo stuff is kind of tough to follow at times, but just roll with it, it isn’t confusing for long.  3.5 stars made of thin colorful glass, glowing with a pulsing magical light.