The Door into Fire

Diana Duane

Completed 4/23/2018, Reviewed 4/23/2018

4 stars

I really enjoyed this book.  It was filled with gorgeous prose and world building.  All the characters are bisexual and polyamorous and the main relationship is between two men.   None of the sex is overstated and the love is genuine.  The characters are very real and the magic is wonderfully devised.  I chewed this up in two days and look forward to eventually reading the rest of the series.

The story is mostly about Herewiss, a sorcerer who is the first male in many years to possess the power of the Fire.  However, no teacher has been able to help him grow into this power.  But they are used to training women, wielding the Fire as Rodmistresses.  Not able to focus the Fire with a rod, Herewiss tries to construct a sword as his focus, to no avail.

In the meantime, he must rescue his lover Freelorn and his companions from a keep where they are held as prisoners.  Freelorn is the exiled heir to the Arlen throne.  Herewiss frees him, but must make a decision, whether to go back with Freelorn and try to help him win the throne or go to a keep in the Waste which may hold the key to his finally developing the power of the Fire.

The prose was simply astounding.  There are times when prose seems overwrought and hard to read.  But this I found wonderful, easy to read, and very vital to the story telling.  Tied directly to the prose is the world building.  In just a short 260 pages, Duane builds a world with magic, religion, and complex but very human relationships.  Magic doesn’t come without cost.  It exhausts and rebounds.  It is affected by the temperament, history, and relationships of the wielder.  Spells can be broken by a change in one of these factors.   But even more important, the Fire, when harnessed, can give a sorcerer even greater power.

The religion in the book is goddess based.  She of course is life and love.  Everyone experiences her in their own way.  For Herewiss, Freelorn, and their companions, they get to experience her directly.  I won’t give the scene away but it is very amusing and profound. 

The characterization is also marvelous.  The characters all develop over the span of this short book, something I found remarkable.  Even the elemental being grows over the course of the book.  And most interesting of all is their relationships.  Everyone is free to choose who they love and may love multiple persons.  Done poorly, this could have been a quagmire of nothing but sexual escapades.  Here, Duane handles it with extreme tenderness and sensibility.  She uses the word share as a euphemism for sex, and it works really well.

I give this book four out of five stars.  The plot is fairly straightforward.  It has been done before and since.  But the world building is just wonderful and the storytelling is a delight.