The Fire, Katherine Neville
The Fire, Katherine Neville
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The Fire

Author: Katherine Neville

Narrator: Susan Denaker

Abridged: 6 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/14/2008


Synopsis

Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: THE FIRE

2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with them the secrets of the power that comes with possessing it. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed clues, followed swiftly by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious assortment of houseguests, indicates that something sinister is afoot. 

When she inadvertently discovers from her aunt, the chess grandmaster Lily Rad, that the most powerful piece of Charlemagne’s service has suddenly resurfaced and the Game has begun again, Alexandra is swept into a journey that takes her from Colorado to the Russian wilderness and at last into the heart of her own hometown: Washington D.C.

1822, Albania: Thirty years after the French Revolution, when the chess service was unearthed, all of Europe hovers on the brink of the War of Greek Independence. Ali Pasha, the most powerful ruler in the Ottoman Empire, has angered the sultan and is about to be attacked by Turkish forces. Now he sends the only person he can rely upon–his young daughter, Haidee–on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania, through the mountains and over the sea, to the hands of the one man who might be able to save it.

Haidee’s journey from Albania to Morocco to Rome to Greece, and into the very heart of the Game, will result in revelations about the powerful chess set and its history that will lead at last to the spot where the service was first created more than one thousand years before: Baghdad.

Blending exquisite prose and captivating history with nonstop suspense, Neville again weaves an unforgettable story of peril, action, and intrigue.

About The Author

Katherine Neville is the author of The Eight, The Magic Circle (a USA Today bestseller), and A Calculated Risk (a New York Times Notable Book). The Eight has been translated into more than thirty languages. In a national poll in Spain by the noted journal El País, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time. Neville lives in Virginia and Washington, D.C.


Reviews

Goodreads review by James on October 03, 2017

Almost as good as the first one! Definitely a good follow-up. I love the Neville's style -- and the way in which the world is turned upside down. The books are similar to most historical adventure fiction, full of suspense and thrills. Neville builds amazing characters, and she takes you to fantasti......more

Goodreads review by Linda on December 16, 2008

I really, really wanted to love this book. Really. I liked it okay... but the love just wasn't there. It's a sequel to one of my favorite books ever - The Eight - and I had high hopes, but also reservations about whether the author could capture the magic of The Eight. Unfortunately, she did not. I......more

Goodreads review by Marijan on January 05, 2017

koliko god da to ne želim, moram knjizi dati trojku. Sva je nekako...nedovršena. Likovi su površno odrađeni, radnja je uglavnom predvidljiva a kraj je jednostavno...meh. Da nema nekoliko svijetlih momenata, ne bi dobila ni to.......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on July 08, 2008

I am very disappointed to say that I had to give up on this book about halfway through. (See below to read what I had to say when I began it.) It's not awful, but ... it was way too easy to put it down and pick up other books. Oh, well. I wrote earlier: [I've been waiting for this sequel to THE EIGH......more

Goodreads review by Rodrigo on July 25, 2022

Continuación muy por debajo del nivel de su antecesor como fue "el ocho". Tramas sin sentido. No me ha gustado. 3/10......more


Quotes

Praise for Katherine Neville’s The Eight

“A big, rich, two-tiered confection of a novel . . . a rousing, amusing game.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“A fascinating piece of entertainment . . . few will find it resistible.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multilayered secrets of The Eight.”
–Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club

“With an alchemical skill, Neville blends a modern romance, historical fiction, and a medieval mystery . . . and comes up with gold.”
–People

“A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“Impossible to put down.”
–Boston Herald