The Healing Wars: Book 2
Blue Fire: The Healing Wars, Book 2by Janice Hardy
Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer’s trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn’t mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn’t enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke’s clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke’s best tracker has other ideas.Nya finds herself trapped in the last place she ever wanted to be, forced to trust the last people she ever thought she could. More is at stake than just the people of Geveg, and the closer she gets to uncovering the Duke’s plan, the more she discovers how critical she is to his victory. To save Geveg, she just might have to save Baseer—if she doesn’t destroy it first. (harpercollins.ca)
Release Date: September 24, 2010Thanks to the awesomness that is HarperCollins Canada, I was lucky to have Blue Fire on hand as soon as I finished The Shifter. There is something about this series that I just connected with from the first pages and I devoured the two books in two days. Heck, this book isn't even published yet and I am already desperate for the third book! (The author noted in comments that she's currently working on book 3 now!)In Blue Fire, Nya is forced to live and interact with people in Baseer, a country she and all Gevegians hate. There is an interesting racisim vibe that is subtly peppered through the story without preaching about how everyone is the same no matter where they come from. Fifteen-year old Nya is shocked when she realizes that some of the kids in Baseer has similar views to her and actually have compassion. Again Nya is faced with very difficult choices in order to survive and yet she still feels distressed when a Baseer child is killed outright by soldiers.What I like about the characters in this series is that you can see them learn and grow. They learn from their mistakes and they grow as people. Also likable is the fact that even though Nya feels she has to make the tough decisions and actions alone, her friends stick by her - and she allows them to help her!I am so tired of books where the main character is all "I have to do this alone! It's too dangerous for you!" and then argues against help from her friends. In this case Nya feels she has to do these things alone because the thought of endangering her friends is just too much for her, too painful. She felt guilty about asking her friends to put themselves in such danger, but when they rally around her and offer their help, she accepts and knows she can't do everything on her own.Oddly - and this is a total tangent - this sort of "me alone vs me and my friends" mentality made me think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the later seasons. My husband and I were growing tired of Buffy's whining ways about how it always had to be her and her alone that saved the day. Had she just accepted the help her friends offered and acknowledged the strengths they brought to the group I think the show wouldn't have gone the way it did. Yes, Joss Whedon likes to alienate his characters, but Buffy was so unlikable by seasons 6 & 7 I just wish he had gone with the Group Help idea a little more.Nya and her friends are close to being a well-oiled machine. They are a pack that works together and each has different strengths that they add to the group and even though their adventures might not always go well, they still work well together.I haven't read a series like this in a while, or ever I don't think, at the middle grade level, I'd go so far as to say this would be a good YA novel as well. It has a similar vibe as Maria V. Snyder's Poison Study series in that the world is original, the choices the characters have to make are difficult and yet you fall in love with the people in the books and you want to read more about them.The Healing Wars
- The Shifter
- Blue Fire
- Book 3 - Fall 2011