inverarity (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inverarity) wrote2024-09-24 08:52 pm
inverarity) wrote2024-09-24 08:52 pm
Book Review: Flames of Mira, by Clay Harmon
An epic fantasy in a subterranean world of ice and magma and elementals.
Solaris, 2022, 448 pages
Flames of Mira seems to be one of those little-known debut epic fantasies that came out a few years ago and failed to make much of a splash, despite a devoted core of fans. I finally got around to reading it, and it was pretty good! I can't quite say it was great, but clearly the author was striving to tell a traditional fantasy epic using a setting that didn't resemble Earth or a copy-paste of a D&Dish world.
Unfortunately, I still felt like it carried the baggage of one of those "edgy, alternate setting" D&D worlds - you know the ones, where the classes and races are mostly familiar, but they've been reskinned for Planescape or Dark Sun?
D&D references are unfair; Clay Harmon might or might not have based this on an RPG campaign (I would not be surprised), but he hides the dice and the character sheets at least as well as Brandon Sanderson does. I know Sanderson comparisons are nearly as tired as D&D ones, but when you go to great lengths to create a complicated periodic-table-of-the-elements-based magic system, they are kind of inevitable.
The world of Mira is almost entirely underground. Entire civilizations are built beneath the planet's crust, side by side with flowing rivers of magma and overhanging glaciers of ice. The surface is said to be so icy and inhospitable that it's almost instantly fatal.
Ig (not his real name) is an "elemental." He has the power to literally control the elements, and he is in a foreign land where his powers are almost unknown and make him a superweapon. He is a superweapon "flesh-bound" to the Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, your basic asshole despot in charge of a city-state under the jurisdiction of a nearly immortal god-king who has "Primordial" enforcers with powers like Ig's. You can bet there will be an elemental showdown, yup.
Ig appears to most of the city to be merely the Magnate's manservant, but in fact, he is an enforcer, assassin, and whatever else Sorrelo orders him to do, thanks to his flesh-binding. And if Sorrelo dies, the flesh-binding will be inherited by his children, so Ig is forever bound to the Adriann family.
Sorrelo has three children: kind, idealistic Emil, ambitious and pragmatic Sara, and naive, feisty teenager Efadora. Ig considers Emil his friend, and he kind of has a crush on Sara. When a coup deposes Sorrelo, Ig has to protect Emil and Sara (while Efadora has been separated from them and thus has her own POV chapters), and then spends much of the book trying to help the Adrianns regain their throne.
The magic system is detailed and complicated, and the fights were sometimes rather overwritten, but the author's strength is mainly in characterization. Ig is a killing machine who's really just an abandoned child looking for love in his heart of hearts, and he really, really wants to believe that Sara's promises of helping the common people are real. The slow realization that she is every bit as ruthless and cold-blooded as her father, she just manages to feel bad about it sometimes, is brutal, but not as brutal as the scenes where she puts him under the control of vengeful mercenary who takes pleasure in forcing Ig to commit atrocities.
Flames of Mira is a good debut novel with fleshed out characters, from the protagonists to the villains, but its narrative is confusing at times. It is a multiple POV novel, with Ig being the primary protagonist, but sometimes we shift to the Adrianns. It also skips back and forth in time, so the author doles out slowly Ig's backstory; how he became an elemental, how he left his homeland, and how he became bound to Sorrelo and his family.
While I'm still not sure I completely understand the world and the magic system, and the POV and time skips annoyed me, this first novel was good enough to keep me reading, and I will probably pick up the next one.
My complete list of book reviews.
Solaris, 2022, 448 pages
People like Ig are born from life-threatening trials that bind periodic elements to the human body, forged in the boiling volcanoes and subterranean passages under Mira's frozen lands. One of the most powerful known elementals, he is forced to work as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann—cursed with a flesh binding—magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience.
When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do worse—far worse—than what has been asked from him so far. If he can't escape the flesh binding in time, Ig will have to kill friend and foe alike as his master seeks to reclaim the throne or sacrifice himself trying.
Flames of Mira seems to be one of those little-known debut epic fantasies that came out a few years ago and failed to make much of a splash, despite a devoted core of fans. I finally got around to reading it, and it was pretty good! I can't quite say it was great, but clearly the author was striving to tell a traditional fantasy epic using a setting that didn't resemble Earth or a copy-paste of a D&Dish world.
Unfortunately, I still felt like it carried the baggage of one of those "edgy, alternate setting" D&D worlds - you know the ones, where the classes and races are mostly familiar, but they've been reskinned for Planescape or Dark Sun?
D&D references are unfair; Clay Harmon might or might not have based this on an RPG campaign (I would not be surprised), but he hides the dice and the character sheets at least as well as Brandon Sanderson does. I know Sanderson comparisons are nearly as tired as D&D ones, but when you go to great lengths to create a complicated periodic-table-of-the-elements-based magic system, they are kind of inevitable.
The world of Mira is almost entirely underground. Entire civilizations are built beneath the planet's crust, side by side with flowing rivers of magma and overhanging glaciers of ice. The surface is said to be so icy and inhospitable that it's almost instantly fatal.
Ig (not his real name) is an "elemental." He has the power to literally control the elements, and he is in a foreign land where his powers are almost unknown and make him a superweapon. He is a superweapon "flesh-bound" to the Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, your basic asshole despot in charge of a city-state under the jurisdiction of a nearly immortal god-king who has "Primordial" enforcers with powers like Ig's. You can bet there will be an elemental showdown, yup.
Ig appears to most of the city to be merely the Magnate's manservant, but in fact, he is an enforcer, assassin, and whatever else Sorrelo orders him to do, thanks to his flesh-binding. And if Sorrelo dies, the flesh-binding will be inherited by his children, so Ig is forever bound to the Adriann family.
Sorrelo has three children: kind, idealistic Emil, ambitious and pragmatic Sara, and naive, feisty teenager Efadora. Ig considers Emil his friend, and he kind of has a crush on Sara. When a coup deposes Sorrelo, Ig has to protect Emil and Sara (while Efadora has been separated from them and thus has her own POV chapters), and then spends much of the book trying to help the Adrianns regain their throne.
The magic system is detailed and complicated, and the fights were sometimes rather overwritten, but the author's strength is mainly in characterization. Ig is a killing machine who's really just an abandoned child looking for love in his heart of hearts, and he really, really wants to believe that Sara's promises of helping the common people are real. The slow realization that she is every bit as ruthless and cold-blooded as her father, she just manages to feel bad about it sometimes, is brutal, but not as brutal as the scenes where she puts him under the control of vengeful mercenary who takes pleasure in forcing Ig to commit atrocities.
Flames of Mira is a good debut novel with fleshed out characters, from the protagonists to the villains, but its narrative is confusing at times. It is a multiple POV novel, with Ig being the primary protagonist, but sometimes we shift to the Adrianns. It also skips back and forth in time, so the author doles out slowly Ig's backstory; how he became an elemental, how he left his homeland, and how he became bound to Sorrelo and his family.
While I'm still not sure I completely understand the world and the magic system, and the POV and time skips annoyed me, this first novel was good enough to keep me reading, and I will probably pick up the next one.
My complete list of book reviews.