Fire Logic

Laurie J. Marks

Completed 3/23/2019, Reviewed 3/24/2019

3 stars

Most of the fantasy I’ve read is high fantasy, urban fantasy, and other common subgenres.  This was what I guess could be called low fantasy.  There are no kings, elves, fairies, or fantastical magic.  This book was a gritty story about more or less everyday-type people trying to make a difference in their world.  There’s a little magic, elemental as the title implies, but it’s very fundamental, organic, and appears mostly by way of healers and seers, at least in this first book of the Elemental Logic series.  It won the 2003 Gaylactic Spectrum award for positive LGBTQ content in SF/Fantasy, as did its sequel in 2005.  But despite good writing, I found it hard to follow where the author wanted to go with the plot.  It had many moments, but they didn’t sum up to a great whole. 

The book revolves around characters in the country of Shaftal.  It’s been invaded by the Sainnites.  Zanja’s tribe was wiped out; she’s the only survivor.  She’s a fire elemental and a lesbian person of color (Note: the book cover is whitewashed, sigh).  Most of the story is told from her perspective.  She meets and falls in love with Karis, a half-giant who is addicted to a deadly drug called smoke.  Karis is an earth elemental, a metalsmith, and a powerful healer, but the drug is slowly taking its toll.  Zanja also meets Emil, a gay officer fighting in the Shaftal resistance.  At one point, she joins Emil’s paladins on a guerrilla quest to route the Sainnites from part of Shaftal.  The story is also told from Karis’ and Emil’s POV, but the majority of our experience of them is through Zanja’s eyes.

The character development is quite amazing.  I really felt like I was in the skin of the three main characters.  Most of the time we are in Zanja’s head.  One of the most interesting things about her is that she gets hurt in battle and once by the other paladins.  She gets healed physically, but it takes time to recover from the psychological damage done by the hurt.  Karis’ character is also quite a revelation.  Her descent into oblivion from smoke is devastating.  The author did a terrific job getting addiction down as well as the dangerous withdrawal from it.  Emil is great as Zanja’s guardian and cheerleader.  He’s also a scholar who treasures books. 

The part of the book that baffled me was the main plot arc.  It didn’t seem to have a specific direction.  I thought it just meandered with Zanja first surviving her people’s holocaust, then meeting Karis, then joining Emil’s paladins, and so on, until the end.  I felt like I was on her journey, but I didn’t know why.  This made the book sometimes tough to get through.  The ending was pretty good, even exciting, but I wasn’t sure how I really got there.  Despite all this, the prose was stupendous.  There were moments that were simply inspired, and I enjoyed reading it.  But again, I felt like I didn’t know the reason we were on this journey. 

I give the book three stars out of four.  It had all the makings of a four star book, but in the end, I didn’t know how I had gotten there.  I’m still going to read the first sequel, as it is an award winner and on my LGBTQ Speculative Fiction Resource List on Worlds Without End.  But unless the second book has a stronger plot, I don’t think I’ll finish the series.