The Fire

A Novel

By: Katherine Neville

Narrated by: Susan Denaker

Length: 18 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than 20 years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: The Fire

2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with them the secrets of the power that comes with possessing it. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed clues, followed swiftly by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious assortment of houseguests, indicates that something sinister is afoot. When she inadvertently discovers from her aunt, the chess grandmaster Lily Rad, that the most powerful piece of Charlemagne’s service has suddenly resurfaced and the Game has begun again, Alexandra is swept into a journey that takes her from Colorado to the Russian wilderness and at last into the heart of her own hometown: Washington D.C.

1822, Albania: 30 years after the French Revolution, when the chess service was unearthed, all of Europe hovers on the brink of the War of Greek Independence. Ali Pasha, the most powerful ruler in the Ottoman Empire, has angered the sultan and is about to be attacked by Turkish forces. Now he sends the only person he can rely upon - his young daughter, Haidee - on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania, through the mountains and over the sea, to the hands of the one man who might be able to save it.

Haidee’s journey from Albania to Morocco to Rome to Greece, and into the very heart of the Game, will result in revelations about the powerful chess set and its history that will lead at last to the spot where the service was first created more than 1,000 years before: Baghdad.

Blending exquisite prose and captivating history with nonstop suspense, Neville again weaves an unforgettable story of peril, action, and intrigue. 

And there's more to the story! Don't miss the first book, The Eight.

©2008 Katherine Neville (P)2008 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"A big, rich, two-tiered confection of a novel....a rousing, amusing game." (San Francisco Chronicle) 

“A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark.” (The Washington Post Book World) 

"A fascinating piece of entertainment...few will find it resistible." (Los Angeles Times Book Review) 

Under rated by most reviewers

The Eight was a fantastic read and it must have been tough to create the logical completion of the story but Katherine Neville did it skillfully. If you intend to read this you must read The Eight first as much of the material in The Fire is best understood after reading The Eight. I thought Susan Denaker did a good job of reading the book, maybe some of her accents weren't perfect but you can tell who's speaking and still keep your mind on your driving. Audible needs to fix part 3 as one chapter is repeated back to back.

Not bad, but...

A good director can salvage a weak script and a good narrator can do the same for a marginal book.This is a mystery/thriller, but it is read as though it's a bedtime story being read to children! I found it so annoying that it detracted from the story. I'll have to read the book!

A Terrible Disappointment

My wife and I also had read Neville's novel "The Eight" and were looking forward to her latest work. What a disappointment.

The previous reviewer is spot on. The story is confusing with a lot of loose ends never tied up. For a mystery/thriller, the literary technique is rather amateurish, inventing solutions to some problems which the reader could not possibly have guessed or deduced.

A great deal of time is spent developing the historical framework, but it is hardly significant as presented and could have been done much better.

Don't waste you time...

Not as good as The Eight, but still worth a listen

Twenty years later, Neville finally wrote a sequel to her bestseller "The Eight". While it is not as well written as the first nor as extensive, it is still an enjoyable listen on a rainy day. The story gets a bit lost here and there and one is not really sure just what the game is about, but oddly, that does present a pleasant listen as you try to figure out just where it is trying to go along with some pleasing characters.

The narrator is the same as the one who performed "The Eight" and she does a very good job with what she has to work with.

Just meh

I thought perhaps the unfavorable reviews may have been a little harsh, but alas they weren't. This book isn't well written or well read. The ending disappointed and I wanted to strangle Alexandria throughout the entire book with her OTT thoughts and reactions.

great sequel!

read these two back to back and this was a good continuation of the Eight.

The worst book I ever listened to...

Although The Eight was not earth shattering fiction I enjoyed it and was really looking forward to listening to the sequel. It is almost unbelievable how poorly written, disjointed and ridiculously repetitive this book is, I was amazed at how many times the main character got a light bulb revelation on the meaning of events that the author neglected to share with the reader (e.g. "All of a sudden it all made perfect sense" , on to next topic...). What probably irritated me the most were lines like "didn't she know lives were at stake here" that were constantly bantered around with absolutely no evidence before or after of any imminent threat or adversary. Hands down this is the worst book I've listened to...

Confusing and unresolved

My wife and I were looking forward to this sequel to The Eight, which we really enjoyed, but this one was confusing and left a lot of elements unresolved. The ending was disappointing and didn't really explain the even the major plot elements.

Don't waste a credit

This book needs to be re-recorded with a differnet narator..I would suggest Tim Curry, or Neil G. The best I've come across so far.

I wanted to like this book

What a disappointment this was. I loved The Eight and have read it several times and recommended it to many friends. The Fire was confusing, pointless and a waste of time. No early 20-something would speak the way Alexandra did and I’m not even sure how it ended even though I finished it today. If I could have returned this, I would have and I think I’ve only ever returned two books in all the years I’ve been an Audible user.