Firefly Island

The story is set on Firefly Island, a land inhabited by four peoples, each with their own magical gift. The Stonesons can magically manipulate stone, Esirens can transmit thoughts, Healers have the power to heal wounds, and the Forrestfolk can transform their own bodies to mimic the attributes of animals. From time to time, each race will produce an individual known as a Firechild, whose powers dramatically surpass the others of their race.

Aeolia, a teenage girl, has a unique gift: she can link her mind to those around her, directly sharing thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Her gift must be kept secret at any cost, because it makes her the only person on the Island capable of killing Sinther, brutal king of the militaristic nation of Stonemark, whose mastery of the innate magic of his people has let him transform his body into invulnerable living stone. Sinther knows that someone with the power to harm him is out there, and is willing to destroy whole nations to eliminate the only threat to his rule. Sold into slavery as a child, Aeolia’s only solace is the hope that she will someday be reunited with Joren, her brother, who swore that someday he would find her.

Her life as a slave comes to an end when she is found by Prince Lale, son of King Sinther. He means to kill her, but a struggle breaks out and Aeolia escapes in the chaos. On the run, hoping to find her brother, Aeolia finds a protector in a young man named Talin. Her desperate flight will take her across the Island and into a bloody struggle for the future of all its peoples. It will also bring her to her beloved brother Joren, but he is not the boy Aeolia used to know…

I enjoyed this book a good deal. After a slightly slow start, the story picks up and kept me interested. The magical innate abilities that form the basis of the setting were an interesting change from the sort of magic more typical of medieval fantasy, and are used in some creative ways. The characters are interesting and enjoyable, and the portrayal of Aeolia’s growing strength and courage in the face of increasing and adversity is well-done.

The book did have two weaknesses. The first is that the romantic subplot involving Aeolia seemed to progress too fast, and with too little fleshing out. This diminished its effects somewhat. The second is that Arenson’s descriptions of large-scale battles, which are important to the plot, were not satisfying to me; they would have benefited from more attention and detail.

Overall, however, the book’s strengths overshadow its weaknesses. One of my favorite aspects was the way magic was used and described- the bodies of the shapeshifting Forrestfolk warping and shifting with each moment to gain advantage in battle, Stoneson armies bringing fortifications crashing down by sheer combined will, or the confusing and somewhat frightening blurring of thought and identity when Aeolia fully links with another mind. I especially enjoyed the look at what happens when a Forrestwoman gets cut in two while temporarily shifted into the form of a worm. A powerful Forrestfolk shapeshifter can take on the attributes as the form of other animals, and worms have some remarkable regenerative abilities…

I also quite liked the characterization of the evil Prince Lale: prince of a great nation, leader of armies, and pitilessly brutal to those who oppose him, yet ultimately a pathetic, even pitiable figure driven not by ambition or power or ideals, but by a self-destructive desperation to please and be accepted by his tyrannical father. I found the character both poignant and sadly believable. This also provides some nice characterization for his father King Sinther, despite the relative brevity of Sinther’s personal appearances in the book. It is made clear from his bloody crimes against the nations of the Island that Sinther is an evil figure, but it is Arenson’s portrayal of Sinther’s revoltingly cruel psychological destruction of his own son that really sold him to me as a monster.

I thought “Firefly Island” was a very promising debut for Arenson. As a self-contained story of only 347 pages, it is an especially good choice if you like fantasy but don’t want to become committed to reading a long series or one of the 900-page tomes that are so common in fantasy nowadays. It is also, despite some fairly grim aspects, generally more upbeat in tone than many other modern writers of medieval fantasy, which is nice if you enjoy the genre but want a break from the darker, more downbeat worlds of fantasy authors like Glen Cook, George Martin, or Steven Erikson. I would highly recommend this book for fantasy fans, and look forward to seeing how Daniel Arenson develops.