★★★★☆ Doesn't have quite the same magic

Fyrebirds

Kate J. Armstrong

Kate Armstrong's Nightbirds (her debut novel, I think) was magical. A novelist must always be a kind of puppeteer. She must manipulate her readers' perceptions and emotions. If you are an experienced fiction reader, you can see the strings being pulled. You say to yourself, "This is how she is trying to make me love AEsa, this is how she shows me Fen's vulnerability, ..." Usually. The sign of a really skilled puppeteer, however, is that the strings vanish. That was what Nightbirds was like for me. I mean, in retrospect I can see the strings, but while I read it, they were invisible to me. The magic just worked.

I was eager for the sequel Fyrebirds. I pre-ordered it and started it almost immediately after it appeared on my kindle. Fyrebirds is good, but I am sorry to say that it didn't have quite the same magic as Nightbirds. It was a little too obvious what Armstrong was doing to me and how she was doing it. Her handling of events was a little less deft. I found myself questioning plot mechanics, "How did they get THERE in time to do THAT?". I found myself not believing important parts, especially the end, which tied everything up in too neat a little knot.

Now, I want to be clear that I liked Fyrebirds -- I liked it a lot. Armstrong remains on the list of authors whose future work I will eagerly follow. But Fyrebirds did not have the magic of Nightbirds.

Fyrebirds on Amazon

Goodreads review

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