The Fire

A Novel

By: Katherine Neville

Narrated by: Susan Denaker

Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: THE FIRE

2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with them the secrets of the power that comes with possessing it. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed clues, followed swiftly by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious assortment of houseguests, indicates that something sinister is afoot.

When she inadvertently discovers from her aunt, the chess grandmaster Lily Rad, that the most powerful piece of Charlemagne’s service has suddenly resurfaced and the Game has begun again, Alexandra is swept into a journey that takes her from Colorado to the Russian wilderness and at last into the heart of her own hometown: Washington D.C.

1822, Albania: Thirty years after the French Revolution, when the chess service was unearthed, all of Europe hovers on the brink of the War of Greek Independence. Ali Pasha, the most powerful ruler in the Ottoman Empire, has angered the sultan and is about to be attacked by Turkish forces. Now he sends the only person he can rely upon–his young daughter, Haidee–on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania, through the mountains and over the sea, to the hands of the one man who might be able to save it.

Haidee’s journey from Albania to Morocco to Rome to Greece, and into the very heart of the Game, will result in revelations about the powerful chess set and its history that will lead at last to the spot where the service was first created more than one thousand years before: Baghdad.

Blending exquisite prose and captivating history with nonstop suspense, Neville again weaves an unforgettable story of peril, action, and intrigue.©2008 Katherine Neville; (P)2008 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

Praise for Katherine Neville’s The Eight

“A big, rich, two-tiered confection of a novel . . . a rousing, amusing game.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“A fascinating piece of entertainment . . . few will find it resistible.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multilayered secrets of The Eight.”
–Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club

“With an alchemical skill, Neville blends a modern romance, historical fiction, and a medieval mystery . . . and comes up with gold.”
–People

“A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“Impossible to put down.”
–Boston Herald

A great follow up to The Eight.

The twists and turns were endless and yet all loose ends came together in the end but definitely not as expected. I very much enjoyed every moment and was sorry to see it come to an end.

great sequel!

read these two back to back and this was a good continuation of the Eight.

Not What I Was Hoping For...

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

As a devout fan of The Eight and having both read it (more than once) and had the pleasure of listening to it, I was hopeful that The Fire would be an equally matched, if not better prequel. I found it to be disjointed, confusing and that it lacked a state of fluidity to the storyline itself. You do jump back and forth, between present day and past, as you did in The Eight, but in the end, it left more questions than it brought answers to both the story as well as to understanding the end game itself. I will openly admit that when I reached the end of the audio book, I did say out loud "that's it?!" The narration made this enjoyable for me and it was just as pleasurable to listen as The Eight was. The narrator is lovely to listen to and I feel that if it weren't for her talent of setting a nice rhythm to the story, as well as developing each character, as the listener, it may had been more confusing to follow and grasp the story itself. Distinction is everything. Perhaps the vacant end could be there is another novel in the future and The Fire was to bridge a gap? Time may tell? I'm happy I listened to it and I didn't listen to other reviews. I will definitely listen to it again and give it another chance. I do hope that anyone reading this, who is a fan of the predecessor, will give it a chance as well. Perhaps the second listen will bring a different level of understanding to the story. However, I do hope this isn't the end.

Not as good as The Eight, but still worth a listen

Twenty years later, Neville finally wrote a sequel to her bestseller "The Eight". While it is not as well written as the first nor as extensive, it is still an enjoyable listen on a rainy day. The story gets a bit lost here and there and one is not really sure just what the game is about, but oddly, that does present a pleasant listen as you try to figure out just where it is trying to go along with some pleasing characters.

The narrator is the same as the one who performed "The Eight" and she does a very good job with what she has to work with.

Mostly enjoyable

Like its predecessor, The Eight, the heroine is in pursuit of magical mystery. Unlike The Eight, it's narration of historical events is more tedious to me - probably not the author's fault, but my own since I know only a bit of middle east and African history. So I did spend some time looking up the history to get a better understanding. But not that you have to, that's just a path I travel for an historical novel.

My only complaint is the narrator. Her voice was much too mature for Alexandra who is suppose to be 22. She sounds 52. Denaker does a nice job with the other characters. That said, I frequently felt her performance to be forced, as if the story bored her and Alexandra as well.