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Cold Fire.
Aug. 9th, 2012 10:22Elliott, Kate. Cold Fire. New York: Orbit Books, 2011.
After I finished Cold Magic I tore right into this book, which follows Cat and Bee as they struggle to stay one step ahead of the Cold Mages trying to possess them and, even worse, the Wild Hunt, which comes for people like Bee and dismembers them and leaves their heads in a well. Their journey takes them among radicals and trolls across the sea to the city of Expedition, which corresponds to the city of Santo Domingo in our Dominican Republic, much as Cat and Bee's beloved Adurnam corresponds to our Southampton. The correspondence is almost entirely irrelevant, however, since all of the intervening history is different.
Expedition is a free city founded by refugees from the Malian Empire and exists by treaty with and sufferance of the Taino Kingdom, which claims most of what we know as the Antilles. I've done a teeny bit of the research on this, too, and from what I can tell Elliott does a good job of inventing plausible alternate futures. (I'd like to ask her about the haplogenetic issue, just out of curiosity.) Expedition society is smartly and vividly painted - the food descriptions kept making me hungry - and the polyglot culture is fascinating. Cat washes ashore there with little more than the clothes on her back and her determination to save Bee from the Wild Hunt, having learned who her biological father is. No sooner does she walk ashore does she encounter her erstwhile husband Andevai, the cold mage, working as a carpenter.
( La forza del destino )
The unstable element in all of this is the spirit world, of course, and Cat's sire (and what he does at the end of the book, OMG), and her awesome brother Rory, and what Bee is becoming. I can't wait for Cold Steel.
After I finished Cold Magic I tore right into this book, which follows Cat and Bee as they struggle to stay one step ahead of the Cold Mages trying to possess them and, even worse, the Wild Hunt, which comes for people like Bee and dismembers them and leaves their heads in a well. Their journey takes them among radicals and trolls across the sea to the city of Expedition, which corresponds to the city of Santo Domingo in our Dominican Republic, much as Cat and Bee's beloved Adurnam corresponds to our Southampton. The correspondence is almost entirely irrelevant, however, since all of the intervening history is different.
Expedition is a free city founded by refugees from the Malian Empire and exists by treaty with and sufferance of the Taino Kingdom, which claims most of what we know as the Antilles. I've done a teeny bit of the research on this, too, and from what I can tell Elliott does a good job of inventing plausible alternate futures. (I'd like to ask her about the haplogenetic issue, just out of curiosity.) Expedition society is smartly and vividly painted - the food descriptions kept making me hungry - and the polyglot culture is fascinating. Cat washes ashore there with little more than the clothes on her back and her determination to save Bee from the Wild Hunt, having learned who her biological father is. No sooner does she walk ashore does she encounter her erstwhile husband Andevai, the cold mage, working as a carpenter.
( La forza del destino )
The unstable element in all of this is the spirit world, of course, and Cat's sire (and what he does at the end of the book, OMG), and her awesome brother Rory, and what Bee is becoming. I can't wait for Cold Steel.