Friday, 12 May 2023

Critique: Fire World (Chris D’Lacey)

This world is called Co: pern: ica and if things aren’t perfect, they’re corrected and the person responsible is sent to the Deadlands. Nothing can go against the ‘Grand Design’. The only species are humans, fire birds and katts. It sounds a bit authoritarian and boring to live there. People imagineer, an ability that allows them to create things, including children. People can’t imagineer in the Deadlands.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

The Higher, the thing that rules the world, sits atop the Librarium. We learn that imagineering drains auma which is why it doesn’t work in the Deadlands.

 

 

There was only moment in this book that I enjoyed. Mat tries to get with Rosa, saying they could have a house and books. But Rosa responds, ‘But we couldn’t have David’. That’s simultaneously so sweet but so sad.

 

There are a few writing problems.

In this book, we have ‘computer’ and ‘com: puter’. They aren’t referring to different objects so it’s just a lack of consistency.

The author writes ‘minit’ not ‘minute’. I don’t know what possessed him to do that. Also he uses ‘fain’ instead of ‘Fain’ like he has been doing.

The paragraphs and chapters return to a sensible size in this book. Mostly. The nearer to the end the author got, the larger his paragraphs became.

 

Many moments made you pause for thought. Not because they were deep and meaningful but because they shouldn’t have made it to print.

The characters spend the book being in awe of David’s capable Imagineering but it him creating a floating bubble that amazed them the most. Considering the whole point of bubbles is them floating, I don’t understand.

When David looks out the window he sees his mother yet he only notices Penny when she opens the door. How does that work then?

The author writes about Aunty Gwyneth that ‘badness was engraved in her soul’. Come on! That’s so lazy.

As Gwyneth lies dying, she writes with the dragon claw that she lives. But instead of living in Co: pern: ica, the world she lives in, she appears on Earth. Why on Earth would that happen?

The Higher are humans that evolved beyond the need for a physical body. They’re also described as a collective of pure fain. So they’re humans that became fain, maybe? In previous books, fain came to Earth at the dawn of humanity so we know that fain aren’t humans. Unless they were once humans from a different world?

 

Honestly? This book bored me. I regret reading it. The series wouldn’t lose anything if it was removed.

Yes, seeing a society with different relationships with the fain was an interesting idea, especially when the series started to include the entire universe. But for the characters to be parallels to the characters in the rest of the series? That was far from interesting.

The end was great. Not because of a good conclusion but because I didn’t have to read this book anymore.

 

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