Secrets of the Fire Sea

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.

I find the most exciting part of this book once again centres around politics and religion, but this time around there's a whole new race who the turmoil affects. The ursines are a bear-humanoid race who believe that the Island of Jago, where this novel takes place, is holy ground as based in their scriptures. Well the one major problem is that Jackelians have created a "faith" called Circlism which actually has no gods so already these two races do not get along cause anything the other says is essentially blasphemous in the others' eyes. Beyond that, secrets, which entail some religious background linking all the races of this world, blow the lid off the barrel so to speak. Don't worry though, this book is more fantasy than it is politics and religion!

The main questions of the book really are who killed Alice and what really happened to Hannah's parents? Hannah is the orphaned main character of the novel, oddly enough the majority of main characters for this series are teenage orphans hmmm, whose parents deaths were thought to have been caused by a u-boat crashing into magma in the fire sea. Since Hannah is an orphan she needs a guardian and that's where Alice comes in, she is also archbishop of the church on Jago. In the search for truth Hannah finds new friends and loses some of her own and some of her assumptions are pleasantly disproved.
Stephen Hunt