This year I’m giving each nominated work for the Hugo and Nebula novel awards their very own entry after I read them.
Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon was an enjoyable read once I got into it. Getting into didn’t take very long, but it did take some time to get over my initial reaction to the use of characters from the Odyssey as point of view changes and indicators. I tend not to trust anything that smacks of being too clever in its classical references.
I was also confused by the direction of the plot. At first, it seemed to hop from one main concept to another. One thing seemed to be the main focus, but then it was resolved too quickly. Another concept came up, and was as quickly dealt with. Only at the end of the book was a main conflict revealed and not resolved.
And that main conflict was entirely different from what seemed to be the main conflict at the beginning of the book, but there were still unresolved issues surrounding just about every somewhat resolved issue. Loose ends that created curiosity.
This made sense in the context of the book being a prequel, but I didn’t go into the book knowing that the next book in the series was actually Book 1. I do think that I will read that next book, if only because after my husband read Fire with Fire, he bought it. But I still have 11 books of The Wheel of Time to get through…
Overall, I liked reading the book more than I expected to, based on my reading of previous Nebula nominees. There were times when I didn’t like the style especially, but for the most part the story drew me on.