Book Reviews

Far World: Fire Keep- J. Scott Savage

Well friends. The time has come. I have finished the final book of J. Scott Savage's Farworld series. Fire Keep was such an interesting book. Originally, he planned on 5 books, ending the series with Shadow Keep but the publishing company for some reason didn't want him to and told him to squish the last two together into one. Another thing is that this book didn't have discussion questions in the back and I couldn't find any online. So we'll have to see what I end up doing with this review. I may make up some questions of my own or I may just ramble on about the book. Really, just be prepared for anything.

One thing I kind of didn't like was that Kyja was declared officially, for sure, never coming back ever, dead. About 10 times. It got really old after a while and I get that he was trying to keep us on our toes and guessing what was going to happen. However, I'm not sure I liked being told over and over again that she was dead and there was no hope left for her even though we knew that she was pretty dang important to the ending plot and we weren't going to stop hearing from her.

I liked the closure we got with finding out who their parents are/were and who the Master was beneath the hood. I thought the end was a bit anticlimactic though. I like the lesson that the Dark Circle was making bad choices which resulted in bad consequences, but they all just died in a sudden crash and that was it.

I loved the development throughout the story. I thought it was so funny when Kyja chose Turnip as her name in Fire Keep and loved when she used her magic to try to lessen the suffering of the other humans stuck there. The constant message throughout the book of finding hope and motivation is so amazing. These kids went through so much in the book, faltering here and there, but for the most part, managed to keep going. I loved the bringing back of things from the first book. Having Zethar and Chance be their transportation out of Terra ne Staric and at the end, all of the people who helped Marcus and Kyja (or the other way around) on Earth reacting to the change. I loved the chapter about hard things. I loved the lesson that sometimes the hard thing isn't taking a difficult action, but taking inaction where action would cause more harm than good. The deception from Therapass was so clever. I love Kyja being classic Kyja. Brave, caring, and always trying to be as diplomatic as possible. I loved Riph Raph in the series. He's always been so caring for Marcus and Kyja and is always so willing to do whatever needs to be done to ensure their safety.

The gates. To open fire keep. I love the idea that it wasn't a test to see if they could do it right, but rather to learn from their mistakes. I think it's so great that they couldn't come to a common conclusion or put into words what they had learned but knew they had learned something and that that was good enough to let them continue on. They really put Marcus's magic abilities to the test and I was glad that Riph Raph actually provided a lot of help with those and was a prominent character. I loved, loved, loved the lesson of trust and unity in the second gate. They really had to work together and trust each other to pull off what they did. I probably shouldn't have been, but I was really surprised when Mr. Z was one of the four. I love that the final lesson was that no matter how much you may need to be logical or instinctual, sometimes emotions win over everything else and that's ok and that's valid. I laughed when she was about to kiss him and then slapped him instead. Like, yeah! Go girl!

Overall, the book was really good and I was pretty satisfied with it and it's ending. I liked that they combined the two worlds into one. I loved that in the end, they still weren't after fame or fortune, but were trying to get back to their parents and to help anyone they found in need. I'm going to miss these kids but I liked how their story ended and I think it's a good place to leave.