Wednesday, November 17, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Fire with Fire by Destiny Soria

 




Fire with Fire is the latest Young Adult Fantasy novel by author Destiny Soria, whose 2018 novel Beneath the Citadel was a surprise gem, especially for its set of fascinating protagonists.  I'd meant to get to this one earlier, but it got lost on my TBR until I got reminded of it during FIYAHCon (Soria was a panelist on at least one panel that I enjoyed).  

Fire with Fire isn't quite up to Beneath the Citadel, as its plot is a bit more predictable and formulaic, but it still works for the most part very well, thanks to its pair of enjoyable and solid main characters - two sisters with very different viewpoints on the family business of dragon slaying.  The urban fantasy plot works well, as does the cast of teens, although the villains are so obviously evil that it hurts, and I'm not quite sure how well the ending works.  Still it's definitely enjoyable, and if you're looking for solid YA fantasy, you'll find it for sure here.  


------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------
The Rivera family has been a family of dragon slayers for generations, years and years after the dragons had been hunted to near extinction, and ordinary people think them only a myth.  But for the Riveras, dragons are a very real threat, and their teenage sisters Dani and Eden have been trained to fight them and to carry on the family tradition.  But while older sister Eden has made dragon slaying her sole focus, and trained and trained to be a worthy heir to her family legacy, 17 year old younger sister Dani would rather just have a normal high school life, with the friendships and loves that entails.  

For Eden, this is especially unbearable, as despite all her training - and despite Dani's lack of caring - Dani continues to be effortlessly better than her at fighting and everyone seems to act like she's the real heir to the family legacy, despite Dani not even wanting it.  And so when two sorcerers come to the family to ask to borrow Dani against the dragons, Eden's own insecurities rise up and threaten to consume her....

For Dani, her teenage relationship problems should be all that's on her mind - not dragons, slayers and sorcerers - but then the unthinkable happens, she comes face to face with a dragon, and forges a rare telepathic and magical bond with it.  Soon she begins to wonder if their family legacy is wrong, and the dragons are not the threat they appear, but when she tries to explain this to Eden, the sisters find themselves torn apart by their beliefs - with Eden turning to the sorcerers for a dangerous power and help.  

Soon Dani and Eden will be again on a collision course, with another enemy all the willing to take advantage of their situation, for their own ends.....
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Fire with Fire, as you might imagine from the plot summary above, the story of two sisters, Dani and Eden, each with their own problems that are only magnified by the urban fantasy setting.  For Dani, that's the want to just have a normal teenage life - complete with problems like the girl she made her first kiss coming back into her life, awkwardly - and not to find her soul bonded to that of a dragon that her family is supposed to hunt - a dragon that wants her to help him hatch more dragons from long laid eggs.  For Eden, it's her insecurities over being the older sister who actually wants to go into the family business, who actually makes every effort to improve and be better at it, only for her sister to always be better, and for everyone to always recognize that fact.  

These problems and the characters of both of them result in three dimensional characters who are at times contradictions and are just as often making decisions that are really really bad.  Eden for example is jealous of her sister, but also tries to push and train her sister to work harder, because she does care, because she hopes in doing so she can prove she's better, or perhaps because if Dani's skill comes from Eden's training, it's her own accomplishment and one that others will recognize - it's definitely some combination of these things.  And so when from Eden's perspective Dani seems to throw it all away to go with a dragon, it's only logical for her to go to the (obviously untrustworthy and evil) sorcerer who wanted to use Dani to fight dragons for help....especially when that sorcerer promises to give Eden power to be special in her own right, to eliminate what Eden thinks of as her own weakness.  

For Dani, she does love her family, but she also cares for her friends, first her best friend Tomás, and then later her awkwardly long-not-seen friend Sadie (who was Dani's first kiss and then ghosted Dani in response to the kiss because Sadie wasn't comfortable with that), and then another spoiler character.  And so even though she doesn't want to care about dragons, it's hard not for her to care for Nox, the dragon she's bonded to, especially with their empathic bond tying them together.  And so while she's annoyed at her sister for trying to train her and push her into the family business - and never understands that that training is due to Eden's own insecurity - she is desperate also to save her sister, even after her sister has done some pretty awful things to her and others insist that there's no way to save her.  Dani is the classical unwilling heroine, and she works quite well, as does the teenage drama she finds herself in.  

Still while the teenage drama is really well done, as well as the two main characters, the book is hampered a bit by the main antagonists being so blatantly evil - a fact justified by the fact that they apparently have to sacrifice their empathy and consciences in order to obtain their power, but still.  Complex antagonists who have potentially reasonable ideas are not what you find here.  And that sacrifice of empathy and conscience is kind of contradicted by Eden's own experience when she unknowingly makes the same choice for power - and yet she regains those feelings somewhat by the ending, without really any mechanical explanation.  These flaws prevent the book from truly being really great plotwise, and are a bit more glaring than in Soria's other books.  

Of course, the characters are more than good enough to carry this book, and some of the dialogue is amazing (okay the book has a New York Mets joke which KILLED me).  So yeah, this is still a fun and solid YA Fantasy novel, involving dragons in a nice way, so if that's what you're looking for this will be right up your alley.  

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