No matter how much darkness there is, no matter how much cruelty is witnessed or suffered through, you know it’ll work out in the end, and that’s what makes Lackey’s work so very comforting to read. You know Rose will live happily ever after, because that’s how it works. The bad guys are power-hungry and sinister, and you know they’ll be defeated because that’s how things work. It relaxing more than anything else, with Lackey’s trademark idealism running throughout. Like most of Lackey’s novels, The Fire Rose is mostly fluff reading, entertaining and comfortable to sink into, not excessively thought-provoking or challenging.

More details on that might be revealed in future novels in the series, but as of this review, I haven’t read any of them yet to find out.

It’s a mix of the locally familiar and the foreign. It’s unclear whether ones cultural upbringing affects how a person sees the spirits or whether they truly differ by region and culture there are hints that it may be somewhere in the middle. While gnomes are the Earth creatures in America, Chinese sorcerers have an affinity with dragons. What is interesting, however, is that while the standard elements seem to cross cultures easily enough, the creature associated with it change. Magic is accomplished mostly through calling on the magical creatures associated with one’s element. The magic system in this novel is fairly simple, relying on a standard 4 elemental arrangement, plus a 5 th element of spirit or light. But what story has any merit without conflict? Well, for one thing, she probably could have asked for her employer not to be a cursed beast-man mage with a cruel and power-hungry apprentice. Opulent living quarters close to a large and diverse city, good food, beautiful clothes, and her job mainly consists of reading books aloud to him from one room to another. Her home and possessions have been sold to cover her family’s debt, and she is in desperate need of a job to keep food in her stomach and a roof over her head, and mourns the fact that she’s unlikely to get to do anything that would play to her talents as a scholar of classical literature and foreign languages.īut wishes always get answered in Mercedes Lackey novels, and the mysterious Jason offers her employment that seems like nothing short of a dream come true. Thoughts: The unofficial beginning to the Elemental Masters series, The Fire Rose takes a step into the past, to the early 1900s in San Francisco, and centres around Rose, a recently orphaned female scholar trying to make her way in a man’s world. Jason’s enemy offers to restore Rosalind’s family fortune if she will betray Jason. Summary: (Taken from GoodReads) San Francisco, 1905: Rosalind, a medieval scholar, is hired by Jason, a powerful sorcerer.

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey