Review: Fireseed One by Catherine Stine

Fireseed One

Fireseed One, a YA futuristic thriller, is set on earth in 2089 where people ride tricked-out amphibious vehicles over toxic waters, dance in ice-themed clubs and eat fish that grow up on vines in floating warehouses. Varik Teitur inherits a vast sea farm after the mysterious drowning of his marine biologist father. 

When Marisa Baron, a beautiful and shrewd terrorist, who knows way, way too much about Varik's father's work, tries to steal seed disks from the world's food bank, Varik is forced to put his dreams of becoming a doctor on hold and venture with her, into a hot zone teeming with treacherous nomads and a Fireseed cult who worships his dead father, in order to search for a magical hybrid plant that may not even exist. Illustrated by the author! Recommended for those who like a dash of romance with their thrillers.

When I first started this book  was not sure that I would like it, it took me a while to get through it and that's because it started off a little slow for me. As soon as it took off I was hooked, but until about 75 pages in I was kind of just pushing myself through. the reason I started to get into it after 75 pages was because I really started to connect with the characters. Stine didn't attempt to make her characters kick ass, she made them realistic and as the story develops we see them develop, I really liked Varik as he started out as kind of quiet and unsure and ended up strong but still with a sense of privileged innocence, Marisa was very hard and tough but slowly she began to show a more vulnerable side and I really liked that. 

The story was very original and was a little difficult to get my head around to start with but when I got there I loved it. I really liked that Stine shows us what is going on and doesn't give us some ten page long descriptions of the world. She introduced us to the elements of the story slowly and then allowed us to climatise a little before going into the action, which is maybe why it took a while for me to get into it. I love the way she took the storyline and I love how she ended it, the little twist at the end had me gagging for more!

The writing was absolutely beautiful, if anything kept me reading at the beginning it was the writing style! I loved it! What really made this book was the illustrations in the pages which were done by the author, they did seem as though they were in the wrong place though and may have worked better at the beginning or end of chapters.

Overall, a fun, original sci-fi with great characters that I enjoyed. A little trouble with the pacing at the start brings this down a little for me.

Overall Rating: B-


Book released December 2nd 2011 by Konjur Road Press
Book received from the author for review

1 comment

  1. Thanks for the review, Jade. I just saw this now (in June!). Catherine

    ReplyDelete

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