Megan is the Fire Amazon – passionate, impetuous, short
tempered and driven, she is all that is fire.
Unfortunately, all that is fire doesn’t include controlled, subtle or, necessarily wise and careful. And she’s been making mistakes – mistakes that involve killing monsters in public in full view of everyone and their mobile phones. And her emotions are volatile enough that she has a habit of sparking – and setting fire to things.
The goddesses have had enough – with only Frejya in her
corner, the Sentinel Johann has been sent to Megan to see whether she can learn
to control herself, or whether she is too much of a liability and needs to be
stripped of her powers entirely. During the course of a mission to find missing
girls, it’s his job to assess her, train her and decide what to do with her.
Of course, that would be easier if their mutual passion wasn’t lighting some more sparks – or if the missing person’s case wasn’t far more dangerous and involved than was originally imagined.
I like that the consequences of the last book are carried
on to this one – and not just the obvious like the enemies and Rebecca having
babies – but things like their training being cut short and Megan not having a
full understanding of her powers or her role. Megan’s constant attempts to
ensure that she is what a fire should be is a major theme – she is playing a
role, an act many times. There’s a lot of fire in her – she is, after all, the
fire amazon but she’s unsure enough in the role that she feels she has to put
on extra behaviour, to fake it.
This, coupled with an extra analysis of her back story
both with the police and before as a child really fleshes out the character and
adds a lot of nuance. Her firm morality and need to protect, her fierce
independence and resentment of any kind of interference or even team effort.
She’s a really well realised and well developed character.
The story itself was fairly moderate – it’s not much of a
mystery or investigation but it’s more about Johann and Megan than anything
else. It works, it keeps the pacing enough not to be boring and not to completely
fall down the romance trap and the ending keeps the epic forces of the world
well established with a high sense of both the consequences of failure as well
as the power of the various actors. I definitely want to see more from the various
Ancients that populate the world and what each of them are up to.
