Firespell, by Chloe Neill
FireSpell is Book One of Chloe Neill’s The Dark Elite Series. It was a good read, albeit a bit on the short and slow side.
Lily Parker lives in Sagamore, New York. That is, until her parents decide to attend a two year sabbatical in Germany and put her in a fancy boarding school in Chicago – St Sophia’s. Lily automatically becomes friends with one of her suitemates, Scout. There are the typical brat pack – Mary-Kate and Amie, led by Veronica – and a large serving of musically and academically gifted students. St Sophia’s is a well-respected school. Apparently.
Lily quickly discovers that Scout has a very odd habit; she disappears most nights, apparently to ‘exercise’, and returns past midnight, sometimes coming back with bruises. One night, Lily decides to follow her friend, only to realise Scout and some boys from a nearby school are being chased by a real monster, and Lily is in the middle of it all.
I know the synopsis may look like it’s full of spoilers, and that’s because it is. The blurb of this book gave even more details away, which was annoying because it spoiled a lot of the storyline up until past 100 pages; FireSpell is only 250 pages long. However, although being terribly slow, I felt the plot to be interesting. Teenagers with powers like shooting fire and casting spells taking on others with similar, or different, powers? It may seem fairly basic but it’s actually quite unique.
The characters were really interesting. I was a major fan of Scout. She was bright, funny, energetic and quirky. Without her sense of humour and downright funny-ness, this book would’ve been a tough read. I found Lily to be really annoying as she never seemed to learn from her mistakes and made really stupid mistakes that you could see coming from a mile away. The enclave of Adepts – kids with powers – were quite interesting, in the fact that you couldn’t really tell if they were really on your side and that they all had clashing personalities at times. However, with so many of them it was really confusing trying to remember who was who.
Amie and Lesley, Lily’s two other suitemates, were quite interesting. The former was part of the brat pack but seemed to have a compassionate side, whilst the latter seemed to know about Scout’s disappearances somewhat and had a quirky personality. The headmistress, Marceline Foley, was quite an interesting character but I felt she didn’t remain consistent enough. I understand why she changed her personality, but her personality seemed to change all the time, which was really odd. There are a few sub-plots too, which are interesting and fun, perhaps more than the main plot.
All in all, FireSpell was a good read.
Rating: 3.5/5
Tinted Lens ~ 
January 6, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Lovely review Josh – This one acually looks pretty cool!