Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder Book Review

Fire Study is the third book in the Chronicles of Ixia series. I reviewed the first book here and the second book here. Fire Study follows Yelena facing a larger scale threat, with new friends and old. She relied more on her magic in this book and faced self-doubt. The plot twists were even more shocking and the story was less predictable, something that I feel that Snyder has improved upon throughout her novels. 

However, I feel as though I had more issues with this book, particularly in the beginning than I had with the previous two. The tenses seemed to switch between past and present in places, making the writing feel disjointed and confusing. Furthermore, there were times where previous events seemed to have been forgotten. Additionally, this book was inundated with explanations of characters and events in the previous books. I understand that some reference is needed for readers who have not read the series for a while but there were literally paragraphs summarising what had happened and I just wanted to read on in this story, rather than being told things that I already knew.

I enjoyed seeing the blossoming relationships with different characters and there were pieces of advice that I feel were well written. I was happy to see characters that I love return and there humorous interactions.

It was interesting to see some different locations. However, I feel that some were visited for too long and it didn’t seem like it took Yelena long enough to travel across the country. There were parts of the story that I felt went on for too long and others were just brushed over, for example, there was one point where it said that they made a plan but it didn’t go into their discussing of different plans. It would have been nice to see how they develop their plans and how they might not go to plan when enacted.

I feel that this book improved significantly as it progressed. The first half was full of travelling and battles, whereas the second half featured returning characters, Yelena’s difficulties and the unravelling of plans. I wish that the other characters had been featured earlier or that Yelena had voiced her problems earlier. I kept wanting her to talk to someone about how she was feeling. It would have been nice to get a peek at the thoughts of some of the other characters, for example, Valek. I feel that there are parts of the novel that are not as cohesive as they could have been.

However, overall, the story was excellent. It brought me to tears and made me gasp. The characters were again complex and it was good to see different group dynamics. Yelena and the other characters have grown throughout this original trilogy and I can’t wait to see more of them in the next set of books (this trilogy is followed by a trilogy following another character and then it is another trilogy following Yelena).

Rating: 4/5 stars