Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder

Book 3 in the Study Series
Genre: Fantasy
Grade: C+
Status: Library Book

This will be short because Fire Study is a continuation of the first two books and almost everything in it is a spoiler for Poison or Magic.

In this novel, Ylena is continuing her studies but things go wrong almost right away. That is to be expected -- what are fantasy novels for but for things to go wrong ;-) What brought the grade down in this one is that when Ylena figures out there is a spy in her camp, she immediately turns on what I felt was the least likely candidate. In addition, the primary villain of the piece has been obvious from book two but Ylena seems surprised by finding out who it is as do several others, leaving them to fight a battle for several hundred pages that could have ended much more simply, imo. Finally, the book hinges on a secondary character going from good to bad to good again. That could have worked if the character had been a mercenary and pulled a Han Solo or just plain been a mercenary and either been paid more by the good guys or seen the battle going in their favor and decided to switch coats for self-preservation. He could have had a catalytic experience that showed the villain killed his father (or in the ever popular copy Star Wars style learned the villain was his father.) None of that happened. He just kept switching back and forth with no real cause that I could see.

Despite the above, I would recommend this book. Yes, there are errors but the first two novels more than make up for the mistakes in this one. The world is still interesting and by this point you are invested in the characters and want to learn what happens to them. Anyone experienced with fantasy trilogies knows that final books can be hard to pull off -- they wrap up the stories and often the plot gets bogged down in trying to explain everything. This book falls right in the middle of trilogy writing and for a freshman effort that is no bad place to be.