Fire Within

Fire Within Series, Book 1

By: Ella M. Lee

Narrated by: Ali Dane

Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Fiona Ember’s life has been shattered to pieces. After an assassination attempt gone awry, her friends are dead, she’s lost her magic, and she’s now imprisoned by the magician she just tried to kill.

To make matters worse, she learns he’s the infamous Auspex, who possesses the gifts of precognition and mind-reading, and who’s known for his deadly and unyielding reputation. Resigned to torture and execution, Fiona is surprised when the Auspex offers her a chance to live—but first, she will need to demonstrate the value he’s seen in her future. Fiona must discover what he wants from her quickly, before his patience runs out.

Thousands of miles from home and alone in enemy territory, what are Fiona’s hopes of impressing the Auspex and reclaiming her life and magic? And what happens when she starts being drawn unwittingly into his dangerous and mysterious plans?

©2020 Ella M. Lee (P)2023 Ella M. Lee

I adored this book. Excited for book two

I absolutely adored this book. I loved the characters, pacing, world building and the plot. The story immediately throws us into the action, where Fiona gets captured and held captive by the people she thinks are her enemies.. She loses everyone in her life again. She has to learn how to survive and earn her way into the water clan. The magic system is easy to learn and follow while also having its own unique system. Ali Danes' narration was perfect and I am going to be impatiently waiting for book two to be narrated.

Fascinating Psychological Origin Story

I loved this book! Fire Within starts and ends with considerable action, but the bulk of the book is Fiona's "dialog" (both spoken out loud and conveyed telepathically) with her captors, as she tries to assess her evolving situation. Author Ella Lee does a masterful job of making this interesting, even when the "action" is two people in a room thinking thoughts at each other, and I zipped through the book quickly.

Although the book stands on its own as a pivotal moment in Fiona's life, it's also clearly setting up future plot lines, and ends with a cliff hanger that makes me eager for the next book. The Series feature says there are currently 6 books in the series, and I assume the others will be on Audible soonish.....so I started following Ella Lee to get notified as soon as the next one is available.

Narrator Ali Dane was wonderful, adroitly handling the snippets of Cantonese, French, and Russian, required to provide the full depth of Lee's characters. I'm now a fan and will look out for other books she's narrated.

Can’t wait to listen to the rest

This story is fantastic! The world it’s set in and the magic are amazing! Ali did an amazing job bringing it to life! Can’t wait to listen to the next one!

Magic where???

If you are expecting an amazing book on warring factions of magic with complex characters within that system, you can just skip right along. Although the FC is “29”, that must mean these characters age more fast for all that number is worth. There is nothing adult about this book, even though the author tries very hard. The most you get is handholding. I still don’t get the magic, it’s very off the page and superficial, only coming up when the plot calls for it. The main focus of the book is the weird relationship but that too is very high school drama. All the FC does is cries and wines. I don’t know why we are even listening to her side of the story. Makes no sense.