The Blurb:
Desperate to delay an impending attack by the indigenous people of Xidda, Tau and his queen craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all-out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the ‘true’ Queen of the Omehi.
If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne and reunite her people, then the Omehi might have a chance to survive the coming onslaught.
The Review:
For those of you who read and loved Evan Winter’s Rage of Dragons, and have been waiting to grab the sequel… Well, you’ve a lot to look forward to.
Fires of Vengeance keeps a tight grasp on all of the things that made Rage of Dragons such a success. Quick and brutal action. Anger and a desire for vengeance. Quick, sharp prose that constantly demands you read one. more. chapter.
In these dull, repetitive pandemic months, this was exactly the book I needed. The kind that swept me away to another world, refusing to let me set it down. Fires of Vengeance starts picks up where Rage of Dragons left off: with Tau in a different position, but with another war to fight.
I always think that the second books in a series are the most difficult to pull off. An author has to dance with what brought them to the party, but they also have to offer some evolution. Some additional complexity. To introduce a sense of movement towards the impending conclusion.
In the Fires of Vengeance, Evan Winter does this by digging deep into the themes of his book. And for me, the most prominent of these was an exploration of the cycle of violence. It’s no secret that Tau is a bit of an angry sort. It’s no secret that he has a bit of a scorched-earth approach to settling scores — hence the title. But while that attitude may have served Tau well in the first book, he also never really had to bear the cost of it. When he fights, the world burns.
Oddly enough, the most telling part of this for me wasn’t actually within the novel itself. It was in the acknowledgements at the end, when Evan Winter speaks to his son. “Believe in yourself, because you will always be more than enough,” he says. “Try to leave people better than you find them, because the world can be hard, and we’re all in this together”.
While being an absolutely adorable and commendable message from a father to his son, you can also see the contrast here between the author’s advice and his character’s world-view. Tau believed in himself when no-one else would, and he was right to. But how often has he left people better than he found them? Tau’s story isn’t about whether the ends justify the means, it’s about whether the means justify the ends.
In Fires of Vengeance, Tau’s actions have far more serious consequences. And the same goes for Queen Tsiora. The two have a complicated relationship that I found really engaging, but do they bring out the worst in each other? Some of the decisions made by the pair lead to downright brutal outcomes, which can in themselves trigger more violent responses in return. Violence begets violence. I believe that most fans of Rage of Dragons will enjoy Fires of Vengeance, but I think it’s a darker and harder read.
There have been some steps to address criticism of the first book, and there are significantly more women with agency this time around — though such agency might be limited by responsibilities and duties. I loved how they fit within the cast, and character dynamics between Tsiora’s circle and Tau’s circle made for several amusing scenes.
There are some things that certain readers might trip up on. We learn a great deal more about the lore of the world, and about the Cull — the mysterious group that chased the Omehi off their original continent. However, this is presented in a very up-front fashion: through nightly stories with one character giving the information to another. Personally, I thought that this made sense within the narrative, and I really enjoyed those scenes. However, I suspect that those readers who are sensitive to opaque infodumping may think differently.
There was something that did me trip me up a little, though, and frustratingly I’m struggling to think of the words to describe it. I thought the book was very well paced. At no time did I ever think it was dragging, or focusing somewhere where it shouldn’t — though I was a little surprised that the final confrontation near the end felt as brief as it was. With that said, when I’d finished and I looked at how much progress had been made in terms of the overarching story… it didn’t seem like very much. Particularly compared to the first book.
If the Burning series had been a trilogy, I’d be quite worried about how it would come together — a bit of the “wise man’s fear”, if you will. Thankfully, though, this seems to be a four book series. And while Winter still has a lot to introduce and get through before the end, there’s still two books to come.
For those of you who loved Rage of Dragons, I think you’re in for a treat. Speaking for myself, Fires of Vengeance was a more interesting and complex book that didn’t sacrifice anything that made the first book enjoyable. I didn’t think it had quite as satisfying an ending, but it has left me excited to see where the story will go from here.
We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Orbit Books for the review copy!
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