Reviews

The Fire Ascending by Chris d'Lacey

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bibblybubble's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

keeper_of_dark_materials's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

A very thoughtful end to the series. While some of D'Lacey's decisions make me sad, I can see the thought process behind them. This is a hopeful vision for how we treat each other and our world.

lobeliaparides's review

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3.0

It was... strange but I still kinda liked it, the first will always be my favorite though.

stratusfere's review

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4.0

elizabeth pennykettle deserved better. this is the hill i will die on
aka the ending was Not one that was in any remote way satisfying to me.

faroresdragn's review

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2.0

Glad to be done with this book. This series really fell apart around book 5. Ending was wierd and too much. Only redeeming part was the beginning before the first time traveling but came into play.

saidahgilbert's review

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5.0

This book was a wonderful conclusion. I don't agree with time travel and the mobius strip theory of time but for this book I was able to suspend belief (or disbelief) and go with the flow.

I generally don’t DNF but I just felt like I was forcing myself to pick it up every so often for the sake of “I have to finish it! I’m so close!” It got to a point where I not only wasn’t interested, I genuinely disliked the idea of reading even a few more pages.

I really enjoyed the first book. The first three were pleasant. But at a certain point there wasn’t anything new or exciting happening. It was the same story repeating with different skins. It was unnecessary complicated (and not in a way that served the plot/worlds) and became more and more over explanatory.

I also think for a children’s book there are a lot of messages that aren’t super great for children in the latter half of the series

At the end of the day, it wasn’t worth the time or effort to finish the series. Stop at book 3 or 5 and you’ll likely have a more pleasant experience.

My child self is so sad because I LOVED the beginning of this series. I really hoped it would be a nice mental break to go back and finish the remaining books. But alas…

scribblesandsuch's review

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

Gods. I Love the first few books of this series. It takes a stark swan dive. As someone who loves world building I completely understand the desire to bury yourself in complexities and histories. It makes for very bad reading. The multiversal elements were confusing and boring, the story eats itself several times over, by the end of the book it feels like both the problems and solutions were beyond characters' influence- there is far too much 'greater power overseeing and controlling everything'. The actual resolution felt very deus ex machina-y. The author has a thrill in combining and splitting characters to no meaningful narrative effect. The last section was frankly insulting- no book has ever satisfyingly ended by saying the contents of the book are now just a story in Yet Another universe to follow. This was exhausting. I am so sad that such a good series took such self congratulatory turns into being basically impossible to follow. The heavens weep when a fantasy series turns to scifi for bigger and bolder twists. I wanted to finish the series for my child self who had a few of the early books and loved them. Boy oh boy did I finish it. Oof. Also what happened to the environmentaly messaging we were being forcefed earlier? This should have been a series about a lodger and clay dragons that are secretly alive. It should have been a trilogy. Also very odd choice to land so strongly on that specific type of traumatic tragedy right at the end of the book with no real setup or preparation for it
Also don't introduce two characters as this 16 yr old is besotted with this Significantly Older man and then just have them get together it's creepy

Content Warnings