I recently started reading teen fiction again, there were two factors that contributed 1) most of the customers at Chapters are parents buying for their teenagers and 2) they are substantially cheaper than most fiction. So I pooled my Christmas giftcards together and bought 6 novels for about $50 which is an amazing deal! This was one of those books which reacquainted me with teen fiction and how good and bad it can be.
I guess I should start off by explaining what a fire sea is, as I understand it consists of ever changing channels of boiling water surrounded by channels of magma. If that doesn't excite you for this novel then I don't know what would! It is the fourth novel in Stephen Hunt's Jackelian series, named so for most of the main characters come from the fictitious kingdom of Jackals. I still can't decide which of the four of the books are my favourite but I can say that I now know which character is my favourite: Commodore Black he's an old "seadog" who is part of the royal family which in Jackals is a bad thing since they cut off the ruling king's arms in order to prevent him from using them to smite the people, oh politics don't you just love them, so he's been on the run for some time and has had face changing surgery etc. to keep on the down low.
Where to begin, at first glance this book intrigued me with the autumnal covering reminding me of how I love to hike through the greenbelt just as the leaves are turning colours. Of course this lead to my picking the book off the shelf reading the first few pages where I began to enter the world of three very different characters; Bladud the druid king, M..... or Sulis for that is the name she chooses, and Zac the architects apprentice. Catherine Fisher took an interesting approach to integrating the stories of three different characters from three different eras into one novel, an approach that has me wanting to read more of her novels.