Mandy's Book of the Week (5/9)

I book talked this book last week, so some of you may be familiar with it already.

I LOVED this book.

I'm not a lover of the fantasy genre, generally.  I tried to get through The Lord of the Rings and didn't make it very far. 

But someone told me how good Graceling (also by Kristin Cashore) was and I was hooked.  While I really enjoyed Katsa's story in that book, I thought Fire's story in Fire was even better.

Fire is set in a world that has monsters.  Not like scary jump out from under the bed monsters, just monster variations of creatures that already exist.  You can easily identify monsters because of their unnaturally colored fur.  Horse monsters, for example, won't be the colors of a typical horse like gray, white, or black, they'll be colors like red, orange, or blue.  See?  Easy to identify.

Fire is the last human monster.  She has hair of red and yellow and orange and pink and she is breathtakingly beautiful, as are all monsters.  She is irresistible to human men, who will fight to the death to be with her, and to monster predators, who want to kill her.  Monsters also have a kind of mind control; they can enter your mind and plant suggestions there or divert your attention, among other things.  Fire's father used that power for some very evil things and Fire's reputation has been hurt because of that, even though her father has been dead for years.

Fire views her very existence as a bad thing and struggles with all the terrible things that her father did.  This story is her struggle.

I'm going to go check this book in shortly since I just finished it yesterday.  It is yours for the taking!