Historical Figures - Fiction, Thrillers, Historical Fiction

The Fire

Name: The Fire
Author: Katherine Neville
ISBN: 9780345500687

by Katherine Neville

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Overview

2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with the chessmen the secrets of the power that comes with possessing them. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing–and that the Game has begun again.

1822, Albania: Haidee, the young daughter of a powerful Ottoman ruler, embarks on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania and deliver it into the hands of the one man who might be able to save it. Haidee’s journey brings forth chilling revelations that burn through history to the present day.

Synopsis

Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: THE FIRE

2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with them the secrets of the power that comes with possessing it. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed...

Publishers Weekly

Neville's anticipated follow-up to her debut novel, The Eight, finds protagonist Alexandra Solarin trying to decipher a series of clues surrounding her mother's sudden disappearance. Like its predecessor, The Fire is infused with historical references and ties to the present, sending readers back to the days of the Ottoman Empire to help unravel the mystery. Susan Denaker offers an entertaining, almost theatrical reading. Her characters are rich and well crafted, always surprising and refreshing when the audience least expects it. A fun and ultimately thrilling listen. A Random House hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 4). (Oct.)

About the Author, Katherine Neville

Katherine Neville is the author of The Eight, The Magic Circle (a USA Today bestseller), and A Calculated Risk (a New York Times Notable Book). The Eight has been translated into more than thirty languages. In a national poll in Spain by the noted journal El País, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time. Neville lives in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Dan Brown stands on the shoulders of a giant. Twenty years have passed since Neville (A Calculated Risk; The Magic Circle) transfixed readers with her debut novel, The Eight. No one knew how to categorize it; part historical novel, part contemporary thriller, the book became a cult favorite. Patience is a virtue, and Neville's fans are a virtuous lot. Here is their reward. Set 30 years after the events of The Eight, the game that we thought ended has resumed with new players (although familiar characters figure into the plot in some way), and it returns as dangerous as ever. For those who haven't read The Eight, there are some innovative plot recap devices, but fans may want to treat themselves to a delectable reread first. Neville deftly employs time-shifting storytelling and casts historical figures in her story with such dexterity that you are sure all these people must really have known one other. Ingenious puzzles, enthralling historical ambience, and masterful plot twists abound. More please! Highly recommended for all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ6/1/08.]
—Laura A.B. Cifelli

Kirkus Reviews

Belated sequel to The Eight (1988), Neville's sprawling mystical-thriller debut novel about a quest to locate and decipher the secrets encrypted in an antique bejeweled chess set. Ten years after Alexandra Solarin's father was murdered at a chess tournament in Russia-and 30 years after he and her mother, Cat Velis, managed to scatter and hide the pieces of the Montglane Service to prevent their falling into the hands of evildoers-former chess prodigy Alexandra receives a summons to return to her family's vast Colorado estate to celebrate her mother's birthday. But Alexandra arrives to an empty house: no departing footprints in the snow, a fire burning mysteriously in the fireplace and no sign of her mother. However, a series of cryptic clues, together with a steady stream of visitors-including Alexandra's chess-whiz aunt Lily Rad, Russian chess grandmaster Vartan Azov, Alexandra's friend Nokomis Key and some insistent neighbors-soon put Alexandra on the track of a new and perilous adventure: One of the most powerful pieces of the Montglane Service, the black queen, has suddenly reappeared, threatening doom and destruction. In the Turkish-occupied Albania of 1822, meanwhile, young Haidee must seek out her true father, the romantic poet and Greek freedom fighter George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron. Along the way we learn why the Montglane Service is so dangerous and important: It was crafted in the eighth century by the greatest of Sufi alchemists, al-Jabir ibn Hayyan, who encoded within its structure the secrets of immortality, the transmutation of elements and what-all. Packed with the sort of bamboozling twaddle that should come with a warning: Belief in Alchemy Required. Still,fans of The Eight, Dan Brown, etc., will jump right in.