This Fire Has Lit My Heart

*Fire, Graceling's prequel-ish companion book, takes place across the mountains to the east of the seven kingdoms, in a rocky, war-torn land called the Dells.

Beautiful creatures called monsters live in the Dells. Monsters have the shape of normal animals: mountain lions, dragonflies, horses, fish. But the hair or scales or feathers of monsters are gorgeously colored-- fuchsia, turquoise, sparkly bronze, iridescent green-- and their minds have the power to control the minds of humans.

Seventeen-year-old Fire is the last remaining human-shaped monster in the Dells. Gorgeously monstrous in body and mind but with a human appreciation of right and wrong, she is hated and mistrusted by just about everyone, and this book is her story.

Wondering what makes it a companion book/prequel? Fire takes place 30-some years before Graceling and has one cross-over character with Graceling, a small boy with strange two-colored eyes who comes from no-one-knows-where, and who has a peculiar ability that Graceling readers will find familiar and disturbing...

I finished Fire this weekend. I have two words - amazingly beautiful. This easily jumped up the list to become one of my all time favorite novels. I also read Kristin Cashore's debut novel, Graceling, just after it's release last October, and thought it was fabulous. I highly recommend adding these to your reading pile if you haven't already read them. You won't be disappointed. It isn't often that I become so emotionally involved with characters that I gasp aloud, cry, laugh and shriek "I knew it!" when something I suspected would happen does happen. And now I wait on the edge of my seat for her planned third novel, Bitterblue, which is still in the writing stages. I can't wait!

*taken from goodreads.com