Download Fires Of The Faithful (Elianas Song, #1) Developed By Naomi Kritzer Shown In Hardcover
musicconservatory education is uneventful until Mira and the new song arrive, Mira is her new roommate Eliana is drawn to her but suspects she is lying about her past, The song a catchy little ditty about a murderous stepmother may actually be a cover for a controversial idea, Then the inquisitors of the Fedeli show up at the conservatory, looking for heretics, Eliana is shocked and angered when a friend is executed and shocked again when she learns the secret cause behind a famine that has been plaguing the land.
Fires of the Faithful is set in an alternate Italy of roughly the Renaissance period, It follows Eliana as she leaves the conservatory behind, travels through the devastated countryside, and eventually becomes a rebel leader, A music student may seem like an unlikely revolutionary, but Naomi Kritzer shows how her peasant common sense and the lessons instilled at the conservatory enable her to bring a new perspective to the disorganized rebel movement she finds.
Religious persecution is a major theme, but Kritzer turns the usual trope on its head, The dominant religion is analogous to Wicca it honors a coequal Lady and Lord and embraces the practice of magic, The “Old Way” its trying to stamp out is based on Christianity though its “God the Father” figure is female, Also interesting is that Eliana has no strong beliefs one way or the other, She was raised in the religion of the Lady and becomes aligned with the Old Way for political reasons, but she is not personally devout rather, she becomes a rebel because the actions of the ruling Fedeli and Circle are abhorrent.
Kritzers flipping of the Pagans vs, Christians script and her nonreligious heroine help keep the focus on the politics of faith rather than on faith itself or on which faith the reader is more sympathetic to.
The problem is not what either side actually believes the problem is the way religion can become corrupted by temporal power,
Fires of the Faithful is sad and frightening as Eliana discovers more and more terrible things that the Fedeli and Circle have done to protect their dirty secrets, and becomes stirring as she rises to leadership and starts to shake things up.
The prose, especially the dialogue, occasionally feels a little too modern, but the story is absorbing enough that this was only a minor issue for me.
Elianas story continues in sitelinkTurning the Storm, which I will be seeking out,.star rating
Magic, religion, Joan of Ark kind of heroine, war, intrigues and betrayal, This is a really well developed book as it touches on various characters which are well positioned, That said, in some cases the dialogues were not so smooth and I soon realised that while the book dangles the idea/weak actions of a FampF love interest, the confirmation of it was never revealed.
So I suppose reading the next book in series might confirm or dispute, Okay, I was recced this book based on the fact it had a lesbian protagonist, It was during the mess with Amazon where books with GLBT themes weren't showing up on searches, I did read the author's short stories beforehand as a bit of a warning and was ambivalent interesting in trying them, but prepared to send it off to PaperbackSwap if I didn't like them.
One of the problems with this book is that I went in thinking it was what I consider an otherwordly fantasy when it was more of a verystretched althistory.
The reason I say this is because of the religious elements, Hundreds of years before the series began, Italy still made up of a number of kingdoms, like historicalItaly was, a new religion arose based on the magical ability to call fire and worshiping a pair
of gods the Lord and the Lady, though the Lord isn't mentioned much and supplanting Christianity called 'the Old Way' in the book.
Unsurprisingly, one still gets the Inquisition, de facto rule of the Church, and punishment of heretics, regardless of whose name the religion is ruled by.
While I don't mind Christianity in althistory/historicalfantasy because, . . well, it existed, I tend to worry that any use of it or other realworld religions anytime you mention a goddess with multiple elements to her, I get the same feeling in fantasy taking place outside of our world is going to lead to at best a lack of creativity, and at worse proselytizing, which leads to me throwing the book against the wall.
Especially when they are the minority and oppressed religion, Let's face it fantasy fen root for the oppressed,
On the other hand, Kritzer did a good job of both keeping the heroine questioning which is right, and in not portraying one religion as the Good one or the Right one.
Plus, as an althistory nerd, I liked the fact that the resurgence of Old Way was apparently modified by the new religion, For one, the magefire promoted by the inpower religion acts to reduce fertility, which changed the status of women in the society, The Old Way version of the New Testament gives Gesu only two major disciples, Tomas and Mara plus Guidas/Judas, and states that God is aspected as 'the Mother, Her Son, and the Holy Light'.
The priestess character hints that the 'Old Way' is a reconstruction of the actual Old way and that even she, a scholar, has no clue what it was really like.
The plot also handled the main character's change from music student to revolutionary quite well, including explaining why and how she got a leadership position, something that doesn't always work well in fantasy.
It also had a bit of an environmental message the plot switches from the protagonist's mysterious new roommate, to her discovery that magefire is what caused the dead regions on the border with another country, to her becoming involved in both the Old Way and the reform movement.
Also kudos on handling the 'magic messes up the environment' and 'one religion likes magic, one doesn't' angles, I'm always a bit leery of environmental fiction as well, but it can be done well see half of all Miyazaki movies, notably Princess Mononoke.
Overall, I thought the book handled a number of cliche themes in a sensitive and thoughtful way, Which makes me happy. Plus, it had a good plot and a main character I liked, So I'll probably buy the sequel new, The power of believing. I loved the way that Eliana grow in this series, I loved this book and the friends whom I convinced to read it though it was, . . ok.
I think I loved it more after reading its sequel because it is in that book where you get to see Kritzer not only avoid, but completely destroy the traps set up in having a book where one religious group is persecuting another one.
I am also a total sucker for early music in writing, so there's that, If you enjoy reading this one at all, READ THE SEQUEL, because that is where it truly shines, as Eliana grows into a truly capable character and navigates pitfalls with much more knowledge and maturity.
Kritzers debut fantasy is reminiscent of Elizabeth Moons stories of Paksennarion, the sheepfarmers daughter who became a paladin, Kritzer also offers a tall, ungainly peasant heroine who grows into a warleader during a religious conflict, Eliana, a conservatory scholarship student, dreams of city life after graduation, heedless of the disastrous war and famine affecting those living outside the conservatory walls.
When her new roommate recruits several girls into playing music from the Old Religion, Eliana is oblivious of the implications until one of the girls is killed by the Fedeli the inquisitors of the religion in power and her roommate is kidnapped to work magic for the Circle of Mages.
Eliana flees the conservatory for home, only to discover her village burnt and her family slaughtered, Ending up in a refugee camp, through her clearsighted logic she becomes the “generale” of the Resistance, uniting the dispossessed in revolt against the Fideli and the Circle.
Kritzers Mestierese Empire resemblesthcentury Provence, with a religious conflict similar to the Dominicanled extermination of the Cathars, Eliana comes to see the similarities between the beliefs held by followers of the Old Religion and the new, and uses their common plight to unite the oppressed poor of both religions.
FIRES OF THE FAITHFUL is a compelling fantasy adventure, a sermon against prejudice, and a heros journey in which Eliana comes to understand her world and its people.
Though it takes a few chapters for the world and conflict to reveal itself, this pace worked beautifully as Eliana and the reader discovered the contradictions and secrets of her world.
Her growth from sheltered girl to someone more sure and knowing was wonderful, as was her selfdiscovery of what her beliefs are and who she is.
Eliana felt wonderfully grounded as a teenager going through several major upheavals and horrible events, and her determination to keep going was wonderful to read.
This book was not what I expected but exactly what I wanted, It borrows a little heavily from the bible, but overall, the fantastical Italylike setting really works for the story it's trying to tell, Also Eliana's narrative from musician to was exactly what I like to read.
I enjoyed this novel and am looking forward to it's sequel, . It was an interesting twist on this type of story to have a musician heroine whose rebellion began in playing forbidden music, I also liked that the author chose to have the more "Christian" styled religion Trinity with a female God as the one persecuted, Yet, she was still able sympathetically portray the primary religion and its followers, while the bad guys were part of an Inquisition styled sect with their "frenemies" the Mage Circle.
All in all, a well put together start of Eliana's heroic quest with vivid and deadly realism to free her people, .