Children of Fire

Strong Potential but Slow Starter

<blockquote>Long ago the gods chose a great hero to act as their agent in the mortal world and to stand against the demonic spawn of Chaos. The gods gifted their champion, Daemron, with three magical Talismans: a sword, a ring, and a crown. But the awesome power at his command corrupted Daemron, turning him from savior to destroyer. Filled with pride, he dared to challenge the gods themselves. Siding with the Chaos spawn, Daemron waged a titanic battle against the Immortals. In the end, Daemron was defeated, the Talismans were lost, and Chaos was sealed off behind the Legacy—a magical barrier the gods sacrificed themselves to create.

Now the Legacy is fading. On the other side, the banished Daemron stirs. And across the scattered corners of the land, four children are born of suffering and strife, each touched by one aspect of Daemron himself—wizard, warrior, prophet, king.

Bound by a connection deeper than blood, the Children of Fire will either restore the Legacy or bring it crashing down, freeing Daemron to wreak his vengeance upon the mortal world.</blockquote>

This book lays the ground works for what could be a truly spectacular fantasy series. However, to set the stage the entire world must be built, and then populated with the characters to people it. And world building can be a tedious process, just as introducing and then setting up all the characters also takes time. In this case there are so many characters that it takes some serious time to get them all introduced and maneuvered into their proper places.

Yet while the setting of the stage for this series takes longer than I'd prefer, it shows a great deal of potential going forward. I'll admit I struggled with keeping the characters straight in the beginning, and frankly that struggle lasted far longer than I anticipated it would. Between the number of characters and being bounced around between them I was frustrated. Things began to get better in the second half, and continued to improve for me from there. I'm not sure if the story would have been easier to read had it stuck with each character for longer periods, but then to do that the timeline would probably have bounced forward and back on numerous occasions. So I can't offer a better solution, only my opinion.

It seems to me that about the entire first half of the book was mostly used to set the scene, while the second half was more action-based. Don't get me wrong, for there is action in the first half as well, just didn't seem as prevalent. The first half was also more about setting up our potential heroes and/or heroines, and leading us to them, though there may have been a few false leads mixed in there. By the end of this book we are left with a strong idea about the wizard, and lesser ideas about the warrior, prophet, and king. Though each seems to have been identified, I wouldn't be too strongly surprised should one or more of the characters marked for those roles changes altogether.

Though the action scenes are entertaining, I only found a few to be really entrancing, which I don't ascribe to any problems with the writing itself, but rather to my lack of attachment to the characters. Each time one of the main characters began to elicit an emotional response from me something happened to alter the character's personality, and with it my interest in the character's wellbeing. Those characters that did appeal to me either disappeared or underwent very distinct personality alterations. In fact, so far the ones I feel most strongly about are more than likely considered to be secondary characters, or the supporting cast. It is my hope that they'll stick around, developing further right along with the main characters. Hopefully we'll learn substantially more about these supporting characters that elicited my interest.

Though this review may sound negative, it's not meant to be. Unfortunately for this book, I read it immediately upon finishing an absolutely spectacular book, so almost anything will suffer in comparison, even if the comparing is being done subconsciously. There is certainly enough meat to this book that I fully intend to read the next book in the series, with the strong hope that the sequel will build upon the solid foundation this book has created for it.