Fires of the Faithful

Eliana's Song #1

by Naomi Kritzer

From a gifted new voice in fantasy fiction comes the thrilling saga of a war-ravaged land and the remarkable young woman destined to restore it...

Fires of the Faithful

For sixteen-year-old Eliana, life at her conservatory of music is a pleasant interlude between youth and adulthood, with the hope of a prestigious Imperial Court appointment at the end. But beyond the conservatory walls is a land blighted by war and inexplicable famine and dominated by a fearsome religious order known as the Fedeli, who are systematically stamping out all traces of the land's old beliefs. Soon not even the conservatory walls can hold out reality. When one classmate is brutally killed by the Fedeli for clinging to the forbidden ways and another is kidnapped by the Circle--the mysterious and powerful mages who rule the land--Eliana can take no more. Especially not after she learns one of the Circle's most closely guarded secrets.

Now, determined to escape the Circle's power, burning with rage at the Fedeli, and drawn herself to the beliefs of the Old Way, Eliana embarks on a treacherous journey to spread the truth. And what she finds shakes her to her core: a past destroyed, a future in doubt, and a desperate people in need of a leader--no matter how young or inexperienced....

Genres: Fantasy, LGBT, Queer, Fiction, Lesbian, High Fantasy, Young Adult

373 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

Reviews

[Reni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book mainly for two reasons:


1. The focus on music as magic and alternate religions sounded intriguing.


Religion is often only an accessory part of Fantasy world building. But this author clearly shows her hand as a student of theology, since the New and the Old religions feel like living religions should. They are not just dogmas; not a set of rules related in a couple of abstract fairy tales. These religions have symbols, hymns, rituals, and they came from somewhere: It is made clear that the New religion integrated part of the Old Way (as happens with religions in real life). Meanwhile, the New Way, as it is practised, is clearly a bastardized form of the actual Old Religion (which in turn is more than heavily implied to be Catholicism), but with a twist that once again reflects the religion that has taken over, e.g. giving the new Old Way a female deity as well.

A major positive effect of this is, of course, that the world is a lot less sexist than the society in actual late medieval Italy would have been which is refreshing to read. It is a nice balance to all the male-centred fiction I have been reading lately. Sadly the author still felt the need to have the villain come on to the heroine quite forcefully in one or two scenes, hanging the threat of rape over her. Even though the villain later claims he would not have forced her, these scenes were still rather uncomfortable and I would have liked the book better without them. There was no need to make the baddie appear even more unpleasant. Plus the rapey fantasy villain is such a tired cliché that still gets thrown around too often, and with too little thought behind.

However, I liked that the new and old religions are not clearly split between good and evil characters. So far we have yet to encounter a villainous follower of the Old Way, but quite a lot of true followers of the New Religion are portrayed as sympathetic (Mario, for instance, and the camp priestess), while Giovanni is at first portrayed as rather unsympathetic.



2. I wanted to read a fantasy book about female queer protagonists for once.


The “favourite/best gay/lesbian Fantasy books” lists on goodreads are swamped with m/m, which made this book a bit harder to find than it should have been.

I love that this is a book about a heroine who happens to be queer, rather than a book about a queer woman, who happens to be a heroine. Coming out stories, and stories that focus on the prejudice and pain that queer people have to face need to be around as well, but occasionally it is simply wonderful to read a book a book about a lesbian character in which her sexuality is not her defining trait and of no consequence to the conflict of the book. Yes, Eliana still manages to explore her sexuality, but she does not let it distract her from her tasks as a prominent figure in the resistance. There is no over boarding angst stemming from her sexuality and this reads like a breath of fresh air.

However, those of you looking for romance beware: there is no romance in this book yet, you will have to wait until the second book for that (I haven’t read it yet, but at least I hope the author will have Eliana hook up with her love interest in that one ;) ).



Overall I am pretty content with this book. Its realistic approach to religion is fairly unique in heroic fantasy. You also don’t see that many stories that treat music as magic around, and I can’t wait to see what the author will come up with in that regard in the concluding volume of this series. Also, for a first novel, the plotting and the prose are really good. The book avoids a lot more common mistakes than it makes.


However, there a few points I disliked or that I wish had been executed better:

The book is not so adept at making the reader believe in its scope. There is apparently a famine going on, but while we see a lot of hungry people, we don’t see starving people. We get told that friends and relatives of characters we meet have starved, but we never really see the consequences. The famine remains a very abstract threat at best.

Speaking of scope, I also had a hard time imagining the size of Eliana’s college. How large is it? How many students does it have? How large is its staff? We are only ever introduced to 5 or 6 other students and 2 teachers (and one of them was also the cook?)

I also didn’t like how the book insisted that what is happening at Ravenna is equal to slavery. It is forced labour, yes, but no one is taking away the workers’ sense of self and identity. What is protrayed in the book is still a terrible injustice but slavery simply is not the word the book should be using.

The book tries to be fair to its characters a lot of the time, which I greatly appreciated. For instance, it never forgets that the soldiers who don’t join the uprising are still people – except for the sadistic soldier that flogged Eliana. I guess I can tolerate one psychopath per book, even though his scenes had me rolling my eyes a lot. And then there’s the pretty Celia who is a bit shallower than the rest of the girls. Also the Fedeli, so far, were not so especially lucky as far as characterisation is concerned. But I’ll hold my verdict on their treatment until the next book, as they haven’t shown up in person much in this one. So yeah, the book does fall into the traps of simplistic characterisation occasionally.

Eliana herself is fine. Not a great character, a bit of a jerk to her “simple” best friend in the beginning, but she starts to mellow out during the first half of the book. I am afraid she will end up being a somewhat forgettable hero, but at least her transformation from a relatively normal teenager into a figure of a resistance movement is a lot more believable than other examples from the genre.

I also could have done without the seer character and the resulting plot point of the heroine being a subject of prophecy. There was no need for any of this this. The people in the camp do not accept Eliana as a leader because of a prophecy, but because of what she does: Because of her music, and the couple of useful ideas she contributes to the success of the uprising. And Eliana herself is not motivated by the prophecy either. She comes to the camp hoping to be reunited with her family, and decides to join the resistance of her own free will, because she wants to leave again, and then decides to continue the rebellion in order to take revenge on the circle and to open people’s eyes to the way they have been lied to.

The seer and his prophecy, so far, are simply completely out of place and unnecessary. Seeing how much I hate the trope of the prophesized hero I really wish this part had been cut.


In conclusion: This book could have been better, but if you are interested in any of its more prominent topics (music & magic & religion in Heroic Fantasy), it will still be worth your time. I, for one, am looking forward to starting the second book soon.

[lady h · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very, very interesting book. I'm not entirely certain what I expected of it, but it certainly defied my expectations. Fires of the Faithful is told from the first-person POV of Eliana, a sixteen-year-old girl living at a music conservatory in faux-Medieval Italy. The main conflict of the novel revolves around clashing religions. The Empire follows the Lady, who is believed to have given her people the gift of magic in the form of magefire, now practiced by an elite group called the Circle, while the religion itself is enforced by the Fedeli, and Inquisition-like group. But followers of the "Old Way" (which is literally indistinguishable from Christianity) refuse to let their beliefs go, and are persecuted for it by the Fedeli; in fact, what spurs Eliana into action is the death of an Old Way friend at the hands of the Fedeli. After the death of her friend, Eliana leaves the conservatory and finds herself at a labor camp made up of refugees suffering from widespread famine that came as a result of the Empire's war with their southern neighbor.

I think I liked this book, but I did have some issues with it. The first - and I can't believe I'm saying this - is that it needed quite a bit more telling than showing and a lot more introspection. And you know if I'm saying a book needs introspection, then there's a problem. Despite the first person POV, it's difficult to connect to Eliana; I could list some traits to describe her, certainly (confident, defiant, brave, smart) but those traits fall short of a fully realized character. And the main reason for this is that we get no reflection or introspection from her on what's happening around her. I didn't understand her reasons for doing anything she did; she felt like the epitome of a character being controlled by plot rather than the other way around.

Eliana (and other characters) take so much in stride, without pausing to let anything sink in for themselves or the reader. There are several egregious examples of this, such as when Eliana is publicly whipped. This girl gets thirty lashes and she's...totally fine, up and about after a few hours like nothing happened. No lasting pain, no lingering trauma from being publicly whipped, and the whole thing is barely mentioned ever again, like it was nothing at all! It doesn't exactly paint a realistic picture. This is just one glaring example, but there are other quieter instances where Eliana should be reflecting or at least acknowledging that something surprising has happened, but instead the narrative just moves on, and it feels like whiplash.

I also wish Eliana had been older than sixteen. She certainly doesn't act like she's sixteen (though I guess since this is ~medieval~ times, she's considered an adult), and I struggled to understand why people were so enthusiastic about her as a leader of the uprising. I would guess this has something to do with her skills as a violinist, since there are hints that in the Old Way, certain music equates to magic, but it was still difficult to believe that everyone just so readily accepted her. I don't think it's impossible for people to follow a teen, but it has to be believable - in Game of Thrones, Robb is a fourteen-year-old leading an army, but people followed him because of who his father was, and because Winterfell's men were his rightful inheritance. Eliana is just some stranger that shows up, and, more than that, she isn't especially passionate about the Old Way, and yet its followers are all eager to bring her into the fold for some reason, even though she's pretty clear that she doesn't have faith. Oh, on that note, there seems to be a running thread about a prophecy about Eliana? It is absolutely shoehorned in and never really amounts to anything, so I'm not sure what the point of it was.

I know I sound very critical, but I did enjoy this book. It's a very quiet plot, as high fantasy plots go, but I liked the direction it took. Though unrealistic in some ways, it was grounded in realism in others. I liked the discussion of the aftereffects of war and famine on the population, and how a country might deal with an influx of refugees. I liked that the plot is focused on one labor camp breaking free, and how the logistics of that would work. I also liked the nuance given to characters like the soldiers guarding the labor camps; many of them were sympathetic towards the prisoners and ended up joining them. It's explicitly stated that these are their people too, and they're not just faceless soldiers of the Empire - that kind of nuance is rarely seen in this type of uprising/rebellion plot. I loved the character of Giovanni, a very surly and sarcastic dude disliked by the heroine, but they end up becoming allies if not tentative friends. Another aspect I enjoyed is that Eliana is a lesbian, though she doesn't realize this until the very end. But it's also not dwelt upon; there is no romance in this book, not really, and Eliana's queerness is just one aspect of who she is, which I liked.

It just felt - different. Refreshing, despite embodying the Hero's Journey to a T. Definitely a product of its time and definitely quite different from the high fantasy being published today (which I actually think has been heavily influenced by the popularity of certain YA high fantasy tropes, but that's a topic for another day), but still an enjoyable read. I'm ambivalent about whether I want to read the sequel, though...

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book suffers from a bad case of the "almosts".

The first problem is the world. It is clearly referencing our world, but it's problematic.....

The setting is a pseudo-Medieval Italy with names like Giovanni and Vesuvian and Lucia thrown around, where the men are addressed as Signore.

Of the two religions battling it out, one is pseudo-Catholicism (a pretty primitive Catholicism). There's God and she's a female not a male, there's God's Light, instead of the Holy Spirit, and God's Son, Gesu instead of Jesu. The language of the Old Ways sounds a lot like Hebrew to my uneducated ear.

BUT! her not!Italy is not quite different enough to justify that complete lack of Rome as a cultural center. And her not!Catholicism has, at its heart, a very different passion story of death and resurrection.

And then there's the magic, which is tossed in without explanation or even definition. All we've seen magic do is summon light or fire, which is fairly limp, as magic goes.

If this was meant to reference the Real World, the author needed to explain these differences -- is the magic the difference? Did Rome not evolve because of the Fidele religion of Lord and Lady? Why is this world so very like ours and yet so deeply different?

And if it's not meant to be set in The Real World, why the hell does it reference our world so heavily?

Another problem is the main character's "love" interest. It wasn't until the last two or three chapters that the lesbian aspect was clarified. The relationship between Mira and Eliana seemed like it was *supposed* to be lesbian, but the author didn't include any... sensuality, I guess. When you're 16 and in love, you are all about the physical and I
just didn't buy it. At first I thought it was just a badly drawn best friends relationship and really got annoyed.

That lack of emotion/passion played throughout the book. There were scenes meant to be powerful that I found myself just skipping whole paragraphs. (Eliana finding her whole village slaughtered, for instance.) and the characters seemed to recover very quickly.

(This included from physical trauma -- Eliana receives 30 lashes at one point and is up and about within hours. I've read enough Napoleonic literature to know that a real lashing like that would leave you prostrate for days if not weeks. And never mind her pallid idea of what a famine is like and how people act when they are under starvation rations. Most of her characters acted like they hadn't missed more than a meal or two, not like they were starving to death.)

Finally, there's an issue that I admit is almost certain personal. I don't like stories based around the mythical and magical power of music. I'm all but tone deaf and when musicians start to talk about "giving the song back to Mira" or "harnessing the energy of the audience" or any of that, I tend to get irritated and annoyed.

Despite all that, I liked the scenes in the Conservatory best. The author's prose is best suited to that hot-house environment, the small personalities and petty arguments of girls locked together in pursuit of one cause. Though the structure and existence of the Conservatory was insufficiently explained, in my mind. I live in hope that it is explained in the following books.

Because, for all that, I plan to read the next book. There was enough compelling in the book for me to give it two stars and want to read the sequel. I can't describe what, because the faults were so glaring, but it's there.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eliana’s music-conservatory education is uneventful until Mira and the new song arrive. Mira is her new roommate; Eliana is drawn to her but suspects she is lying about her past. The song — a catchy little ditty about a murderous stepmother –may actually be a cover for a controversial idea. Then the inquisitors of the Fedeli show up at the conservatory, looking for heretics. Eliana is shocked and angered when a friend is executed —— and shocked again when she learns the secret cause behind a famine that has been plaguing the land.

Fires of the Faithful is set in an alternate Italy of roughly the Renaissance period. It follows Eliana as she leaves the conservatory behind, travels through the devastated countryside, and eventually becomes a rebel leader. A music student may seem like an unlikely revolutionary, but Naomi Kritzer shows how her peasant common sense and the lessons instilled at the conservatory enable her to bring a new perspective to the disorganized rebel movement she finds.

Religious persecution is a major theme, but Kritzer turns the usual trope on its head. The dominant religion is analogous to Wicca; it honors a co-equal Lady and Lord and embraces the practice of magic. The “Old Way” it’s trying to stamp out is based on Christianity (though its “God the Father” figure is female). Also interesting is that Eliana has no strong beliefs one way or the other. She was raised in the religion of the Lady and becomes aligned with the Old Way for political reasons, but she is not personally devout; rather, she becomes a rebel because the actions of the ruling Fedeli and Circle are abhorrent.

Kritzer’s flipping of the Pagans vs. Christians script and her non-religious heroine help keep the focus on the politics of faith rather than on faith itself or on which faith the reader is more sympathetic to. The problem is not what either side actually believes; the problem is the way religion can become corrupted by temporal power.

Fires of the Faithful is sad and frightening as Eliana discovers more and more terrible things that the Fedeli and Circle have done to protect their dirty secrets, and becomes stirring as she rises to leadership and starts to shake things up. The prose, especially the dialogue, occasionally feels a little too modern, but the story is absorbing enough that this was only a minor issue for me. Eliana’s story continues in Turning the Storm, which I will be seeking out.

[Cait · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book looked familiar at the library, but I think I might have picked it up, read a little, and stopped -- I'm not sure why I would have done that, since it's quite intriguing so far (perhaps it wasn't what I was looking for at the time?), but I definitely did remember the beginning and I definitely didn't remember the thing that happened just now at the end of part one! Hurray for finding it again, then....

And now, having finished it: I like this! And it has a sequel, which it clearly needs, so I will have to find that (I think I saw it on the shelf at the library).

It's an interesting opening to a series; things start out pretty straightforward fantasy, with a system of magic, a decadent government with a religious inquisition, and an old-time religion of which the first thing we learn is that it had rhythmic dancing music. And it is a pretty straightforward fantasy all the way through, with a war fought with magefire and energy generated by music -- but the old-time religion is a variation on Christianity (I have a feeling that if I knew more historical theology I'd recognize the doctrinal arguments going on) and the protagonist isn't an instant passionate convert. The author does seem a little confused about the place of women in this society, since both religions have female Gods and women have a lot more social and religious power, but a lot of civil leadership seems to be defaulting to men still. I was very pleased with the way the protagonist's sexuality was handled, though; I actually flipped to the back of the book to see whether it was going to be a bait-and-switch the way a lot of fantasy does, and (you may consider this a spoiler, but I think of it as a recommendation) it isn't: her crush on her roommate is not handwaved away.

An interesting start for this series!

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I was recced this book based on the fact it had a lesbian protagonist. (It was during the mess with Amazon where books with GLBT themes weren't showing up on searches.) I did read the author's short stories beforehand as a bit of a warning and was ambivalent -- interesting in trying them, but prepared to send it off to PaperbackSwap if I didn't like them.

One of the problems with this book is that I went in thinking it was what I consider an otherwordly fantasy when it was more of a very-stretched alt-history. The reason I say this is because of the religious elements. Hundreds of years before the series began, Italy (still made up of a number of kingdoms, like historical-Italy was), a new religion arose based on the magical ability to call fire and worshiping a pair of gods (the Lord and the Lady, though the Lord isn't mentioned much) and supplanting Christianity (called 'the Old Way' in the book). Unsurprisingly, one still gets the Inquisition, de facto rule of the Church, and punishment of heretics, regardless of whose name the religion is ruled by.

While I don't mind Christianity in alt-history/historical-fantasy (because... well, it existed), I tend to worry that any use of it (or other real-world religions -- anytime you mention a goddess with multiple elements to her, I get the same feeling) in fantasy taking place outside of our world is going to lead to at best a lack of creativity, and at worse proselytizing, which leads to me throwing the book against the wall. Especially when they are the minority and oppressed religion. (Let's face it -- fantasy fen root for the oppressed.)

On the other hand, Kritzer did a good job of both keeping the heroine questioning which is right, and in not portraying one religion as the Good one or the Right one. Plus, as an alt-history nerd, I liked the fact that the resurgence of Old Way was apparently modified by the new religion. For one, the magefire promoted by the in-power religion acts to reduce fertility, which changed the status of women in the society. The Old Way version of the New Testament gives Gesu only two major disciples, Tomas and Mara (plus Guidas/Judas), and states that God is aspected as 'the Mother, Her Son, and the Holy Light'. The priestess character hints that the 'Old Way' is a reconstruction of the actual Old way and that even she, a scholar, has no clue what it was really like.

The plot also handled the main character's change from music student to revolutionary quite well, including explaining why and how she got a leadership position, something that doesn't always work well in fantasy. It also had a bit of an environmental message -- the plot switches from the protagonist's mysterious new roommate, to her discovery that magefire is what caused the dead regions on the border with another country, to her becoming involved in both the Old Way and the reform movement.

(Also kudos on handling the 'magic messes up the environment' and 'one religion likes magic, one doesn't' angles. I'm always a bit leery of environmental fiction as well, but it can be done well -- see half of all Miyazaki movies, notably Princess Mononoke.)

Overall, I thought the book handled a number of cliche themes in a sensitive and thoughtful way. Which makes me happy. Plus, it had a good plot and a main character I liked. So I'll probably buy the sequel new.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fires of the Faithful is interesting for many reasons. The most obvious is the storyline, which is about a young musician who grows from student to revolutionary in a span of less than 400 pages. Another reason is the unique setting, which is Italian-based. One other interesting thing that this book does is illustrated in it's religious conflict. Often while reading fantasy books about dueling religious beliefs, there will be a good pagan-influenced religion (feminine), being destroyed by a oppressive Catholic/Christian-influenced religion (masculine). This book turns the tables by presenting an oppressive pagan religion and an oppressed Catholic-influenced religion with a feminine slant. The results are very interesting to read! One thing I like about this book is that there are no easy answers. We are never really told which religion is "right." Although some followers of the pagan-influenced religion are truly villainous, others are some of the most likable characters in the book.

Fires of a Faithful has a sequel, Turning the Storm, that I am looking forward to reading one day. I think that I prefer Naomi Krizter's Dead Rivers Trilogy more, but this book is still quite good.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, but I have a very hard time describing it.

The blurb is largely accurate but potentially misleading. I’ll get to why in a minute.

What I really liked about Fires of the Faithful was Eliana. She’s a wonderful protagonist. She’s brave and smart, even though she’s coming from the Conservatory, where she was kept isolated from the rest of the world. She’s willing to help other people even if it causes danger for herself.

The back blurb doesn’t mention it, but Eliana’s lesbian. It’s not the focus of the novel or a coming out story, it’s just something that she herself realizes towards the end of the book. Since she doesn’t realize it herself in Fires of the Faithful, there’s not a romance plot, but it sounds like she’ll get together with her love interest in the next book.

This should be obvious since the blurb says she’s at a conservatory, but music plays a large part in the book. Eliana’s violin is with her constantly, and she cares deeply about music. Music also ties on to the religion in the book and to the magic system. The Old Way songs sound beautiful and are hinted to be the basis of another magic system.

What the back blurb also doesn’t quite say is how large a role religion plays (maybe you were supposed to assume it from the title?). The kingdom resolutely follows the New Way, and the Spanish Inquisition like Fedeli resolutely and violently smother any traces of the Old Way. After her friend Belle converts to the Old Way and is killed for it by the Fedeli, Eliana starts to see a lot more of the religion and eventually converts to it for largely political reasons.

What might make some readers run for the hills is that the Old Way (minus the music and magic bits) is almost exactly Christianity. Seriously, even most of the names are the same or very similar. More on that in the next paragraph or so, but I need to add that it’s not proselytizing. If there was any message on religion, it was the necessity of tolerating other beliefs. There’s sympathetic characters of both the New and Old Ways, and there’s one scene in particular where the priestesses of each both bless the child of an interfaith couple.

According to the author bio, Kritzer has a BA in religion. It shows – I think what she was exploring in Fires of the Faithful is how religions change, grow upon, and supplant each other. For instance, the New Way takes some from the Old Way, and how the Old Way is now thought of reflects the New Way (for instance, God is referred to as female, presumably an influence of the Lady from the New Way).

What I don’t entirely understand is why she used Christianity to explore these ideas in a fantasy setting. The obvious answer I see is that her world’s based upon medieval Italy, of which Christianity would be part and parcel. But given how much else is different (the cities, the New Way, the magic), keeping this one element doesn’t make sense. Was she keeping it to highlight the influences of the New Way? Or how little the characters actually know of the Old Way’s theology?

Anyway, I really liked it, especially as it was a departure from the norm. It felt like a YA fantasy, but it didn’t use the almost mandatory elements I see in all the others. I’m not sure who exactly I’d recommend it to – YA fantasy readers in general, anyone looking for a good female protagonist, people who like music, someone looking for a lesbian protagonist or a book exploring religion. It hits a lot of points.

Originally posted at The Illustrated Page.

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros:
- gay
- butch
- the fastest I've read a fantasy novel in over a decade
- interesting worldbuilding
- gaaaaaaaay

Cons:
- despite the window dressing, it's all Christians all the way down
- still a sort of formulaic fantasy novel

What is up with that cover!! Eliana spends the first section of the book in shapeless gray robes and short hair, and most of the rest dressed like a dirty short-haired peasant Joan of Arc. There's multiple plot points where she's uncomfortable in or outright refuses to wear dresses.

So, despite some (creative, I grant) differences in festivals, goddess-worship, sexual morals, details of the stories, and etc, this is a lightly disguised version of early christians vs the catholic church in more-or-less Italy, plus some enviornmentalism. I don't know a lot about early christian history so I'm sure there are many things I'm missing, but I know enough Aramaic/Hebrew (it's probably Aramaic, I just don't know enough to confirm it's *not* Hebrew) to know that she's not working that hard to come up with her own stuff.

I have some very mixed feelings about christians using Aramaic/Hebrew for their religious purposes. On the one hand, sure, Jesus spoke Aramaic. On the other hand, your scripture is written in Greek! The christian religious use of Aramaic/Hebrew is always suspicious to me, strategically giving christianity a fake patina of age by tacking it onto jewish history/scripture/thought as the only natural continuation. When you're writing a story about your "Old Religion" being violently suppressed by institutional (Mary-worshipping, lol) catholicism, too.... eesh. Where'd you stash the Jews, polytheistic greco-roman pagans, etc. in this story?

On the upside, Eliana is not a capital-B believer and has a lot of questions and doubts about Redentore sexual and other morals. On the downside, I am never going to be a fan of a fantasy monotheism when you can "prove" a given religion is the correct one, as Lucia's story seems to do. I'm not sure if the story is just gonna let that stand or complicate how much of her conviction is confirmation bias.

Either way, I ordered the second one from an online used bookstore and I'm looking forward to reading it.

[Brownbetty · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this is the sort of thing you like, then this is the sort of thing you will like, as good as nearly any of its kind, and better than a great deal of it.

This book is set in an early-Renaissance near-Italy, where everyone has at least some magical ability, and the Church has an inquisition arm to root out the heretics. Eliana mostly cares about music at the conservatory she was lucky enough to get into, until she gets a new roommate, and falls a little bit in love. Suddenly, politics and religion are tearing apart her world, and instead of safe and protected, she's alone and hunted.

Several things worthy of note in this book. First, Eliana's sexuality is a relatively minor part of the book, not because she lives in a society where lesbianism is commonplace, but because she's honestly too busy with revolution to articulate her feelings. When someone has been beheaded next to her, she's not really worrying if she likes likes her roommate.

Second, both major competing religions have a female God, and one of them is recognizably a sort of medieval Christianity. The result of this (or cause, perhaps) appears to be a society with much less in the way of sexism, although there is still a certain amount of chauvinism. (I'd rather like to ask Kritzer some questions about some of her choices, there, actually.)

Third, I really liked that Eliana doesn't really care much about religion. She would be agnostic, if agnosticism were a position she could articulate. This isn't a book about gods, it's a book about religions, and the people who comprise them.

This is book one of two, but I read them back to back, since I didn't want to wait, so I'm not sure I'm capable of reviewing them separately.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really a review of Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm together because it would be tough to review the second without spoiling the first.

Eliana is a violin student at a conservatory in a land ravaged by war and famine and controlled by the Circle, a group of fire-wielding mages, and the Fedeli, a religious order devoted to stamping out the heresy of the Old Ways. When Eliana gets a new roommate with a mysterious past, she is suddenly catapulted into the conflict between the old and the new religion and embarks on a journey that takes her from the southern wastelands to the northern capital city of Cuore.

Besides liking Eliana, the strong heroine, I particularly liked the setting of this book, which is reminiscent of Renaissance Italy without being a slavish imitation; the culture Kritzer creates is distinctive and the political machinations intriguing.

I was a little bothered by the black-and-white dichotomy between the old and new religions; the old religion is clearly Christianity, and I felt uncomfortable with its portrayal as "the one true faith" and with the portrayal of adherents of the new religion (with its worship of the Lady) as generally wrong-minded and evil. The second book was more balanced, though, with positive and negative aspects of both religions.

[I · Rating 4 out of 5]

ADORED the world, the main conflict, the concepts of the two religions and the war, the place that music and magic play in different cultural contexts, the lesbian aspect.
Not five stars because I don't quite believe Eliana's character arc. It happened too quickly and without enough internal debate. I felt like she agreed to lead a revolution and wasn't actually suited to it, and she didn't seem very passionate about it either. Bella is the kind of character that I would believe would lead a revolution, but Eliana is not as committed, I don't think, so it feels fairly unbelievable. I also find the prophecy aspect foolish and unnecessary, because I think Eliana proves herself without the prophecy regardless. I definitely see myself continuing the series.

[Aenea Raskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and the friends whom I convinced to read it though it was . . . ok.
I think I loved it more after reading its sequel because it is in that book where you get to see Kritzer not only avoid, but completely destroy the traps set up in having a book where one religious group is persecuting another one. I am also a total sucker for early music in writing, so there's that. If you enjoy reading this one at all, READ THE SEQUEL, because that is where it truly shines, as Eliana grows into a truly capable character and navigates pitfalls with much more knowledge and maturity.

[Tony Hisgett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent story that I quite enjoyed, but I never really got my head around the ‘world’ the author had created, at times I think the she just got carried away in trying to portray a miserable dysfunctional land. I also found the constant religious references became quite irritating.

The story it started quite slowly and it’s not until well after a hundred pages before things begin to develop. Once it gets going it’s an enjoyable read, although the religious stuff is still annoying.

[Eli Poteet · Rating 4 out of 5]

You won't find the words "gay" or "homo" in this book but that doesn't stop the queer ness of the gender bending main character. I can almost guarantee this was the first queer lit I picked up as a teenager. Music. Rebellion. Dancing. Spirituality.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The power of believing. I loved the way that Eliana grow in this series.

[milo in the woods · Rating 3 out of 5]

good, revolutionary, lesbian madness. could be read as a weirdly evangelical “what if christians were oppressed” but that’s easy to ignore and yeah, it’s a lot of fun

[Penn Hackney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought for $6.35 on 4/25/24 after reading Kritzer’s Catnet books and Liberty’s Daughter, for discussion with the Second Foundation SF book club on April 28.

Note the hints and acts showing that Eliana (narrator) is sweet on Mira (Eliana’s new roommate), and later, Lucia ch.14 p. 327

“Honoring the Lady” = euphemism for sea.

Eucharistic elements, e,g., ch. 6 p. 123; ch. 7 p. 150; Baptism, e.g., ch. 7 p. 158; incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection ch. 13 pp. 316-17.

The Journey of Gèsu chapter headings, fictional scripture, pretty good facsimile

Eliana’s journey of self-discovery to heroism.

An interesting transmutation of (mostly Catholic) Christianity. E.g., “‘In the name of God, and Her son, and the Holy Light.’ Gèsu is Her son…. Gèsu was killed and His blood was spilled upon the sands. Where His blood fell, flowers bloomed, even though the land had been dead before. The Journeys say that we shall be redeemed through blood; the blood of Gèsu will give new life to the land.” Ch. 8 p. 200

Amedeo, a fascinating madman. Maybe an oracle?

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a fan of fantasy, but I am a fan of Naomi Kritzer, so I figured I'd give this a try. I like her easy style and it kept me engaged despite my dislike of fantasy. In this case, the fantasy elements are kind of backburner and the focus is more on music and religion. It ends up being more a rebellion/dystopia story (if it had been published a decade later and was a little darker, it would have been a killer YA novel).

[Moni Benell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this book 3.5 ⭐

I love how the author has used proper music theory and terminology in their writing. This story combines music and fantasy in a way I have never experienced before, it created an exciting magical journey to travel through.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this (and the sequel, which really need to be read together). They reminded me of finding a random book on the shelf in the library as a kid. A little less polished, and a little more radical.

[Maryanne]

Bit too much religion for me.

[Isaac Romsdahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantasy novel that manages to do a lot of interesting things with religion. If you were a big fan of His Dark Materials, this might be another good read.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, and I think if I'd read it when it was first published, I might have had fewer quibbles. Ten years on, it feels a bit stale. Some complaints (vague spoilers):

--The story is supposed to be all about hardship, but none of it feels all that hard. You've got a land so overtaken by famine that people are dropping dead right and left, and yet the main character is never hungry to a level beyond "oops, I forgot to each lunch." Others are being killed by a fantasy inquisition, but no one is convincingly scared of them or really tries to hide their heretical beliefs. Worst offender: the main character is given thirty lashes (from a really masochistic guard) and is able to get up and walk away. Later that day (or maybe the next day?) she's taking leisurely walks, though she does decline to dance. (?!) Granted, I am neither a doctor nor a person who has ever been lashed, so I am drawing all knowledge of lashings from other novels, but I'm pretty sure after thirty lashes you'd be lucky to be alive, let alone turning down social invitations. You'd be lying half-conscious on your stomach and hoping desperately that none of the OOZING WOUNDS on your back get infected, because you live in a place and a time without antibiotics.

--One of the two major religions is a clear take-off on Christianity, down to a deific son named Gesù (Italian for "Jesus"). Why this should bother me more than a fantasy world that's clearly a take-off on Italy I'm not sure, but it does. Maybe it's because the Christianity-esque religion is portrayed as clearly the one all right-thinking people believe in, and the other religion is the one for the murderers and torturers. If all the followers of one religion are portrayed as 100% good (or bad!) you'd better have actual gods walking around in your world as proof of their rightness, is all I'm saying. Also, why is everyone so eager to accept the main character as a devotee of the Christian religion, and tell her about all the secret rituals, when it's pretty clear she doesn't really believe it or know anything about it? Wouldn't that be a teensy bit risky, given the inquisition wandering around slitting the throats of 16-year-old girls as a hobby?

--The main character is a talented young naïf whose family is murdered, leading her to become the untried leader of a rebellion against the... I almost typed "evil empire," thought better of it, and then went ahead with it anyway. Yawn. I've read that book before, and seen the movie, too. (Giving her a same-sex love interest, though? Nice!)

--ALSO, you cannot toss around so many hints about Vesuvius and not give me some volcanic eruptions. Come on, it's not asking that much.


After that longer-than-I-intended list of complaints, I can't actually think of anything to defend this book with, aside from "well, it's competent except for when it's not." It is competent, and I never considered not finishing it, though I think I'll skip the sequel. "Competent" just doesn't do it for me anymore.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

Check out this review and more on my blog!

Oh dear.

This book had so much promise. It’s a fantasy novel with an Italian-inspired setting, a queer heroine and a plot based around religious turmoil, all things I love, but wow this book was not well written.

I feel incredibly mean saying that because, despite my rating, this isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read. In fact this book disappointed me so much because it had so much promise, and I was looking forward to reading it after I read Naomi Kritzer’s Hugo Award-nominated novelette, The Thing About Ghost Stories, earlier this year. Fires of the Faithful was Kritzer’s debut novel, however, published back in 2002, and it’s easy to tell that this is a story from the very beginning of her career when compared to her more recent work.

This book was an easy enough read and I appreciated reading a novel with a queer heroine where the story wasn’t about the fact that she’s queer at all. Other than that, though, this novel was just… meh? The whole thing felt like a synopsis for a much better book.

The world-building wasn’t particularly strong, although I did prefer the initial setting of the music conservatory to the wider world, and oh my god Eliana was the worst. I’ve said before that I tend to like ‘unlikable’ women in fiction, but Eliana was so stuck-up and two-faced and the biggest pain in the backside. I’m sorry, but in what world am I supposed to believe that a 16 year old violinist can become a military leader with essentially zero training? I get that this is a fantasy novel, but none of the people in it ever acted like real people.

This novel just wasn’t written very well; there was no feeling in any of it. There are things Eliana goes through that would devastate most people, but she gets over it all like it’s nothing. For example, at one point she receives 30 lashes by the order of the book’s dastardly, moustache-twirling villain. She’s never been flogged before in her life, and yet she’s able to stop herself from crying out and is back on her feet within the hour. You would not be able to walk after 30 lashes, and you’d probably pass out from the pain.

She also treated her friend Giula like garbage, and I think even Kritzer did Giula dirty by the end of the novel. Oh, and shout out to the incredibly irritating side character, Giovanni, who hits Giula and never apologises. That was swell.

Essentially this book was a huge disappointment and I’m very sad about it, and I won’t be reaching for the concluding book of this duology. That’s a shame because from reviews it looks like the second book is where we get to the f/f romance, but I’m not going to read a bad book just because it has queer women in it when there are much better novels with queer women, and much better work by Kritzer herself, that I could be reading.

[Elsiekate · Rating 2 out of 5]

i think i walk away from this book with the feeling that i should have liked it much better than i did, and a disinclination to read the second book even though the story started in the first book is very much not completed.

why should i like it better? a lot of it takes place in a music conservatory. the main character is a woman (well, still a girl, really) who is a musician--she plays the violin (sorry for the earworm!). she is queer (though she doesn't yet realize it when the book begins, as best i can tell). there are lots of other important female characters. these are things i like in a book.

maybe i don't like it as well as i might otherwise because the central conflict is about religion--a war between an authoritarian new religion and a more nurturing old religion that the leaders of the new religion are trying to stamp out. this is all very well and good but i'm not so sure that i'm all that fond of the old religion, either. (though i should be--it's somewhat like christianity trying to take over a kind of judaism/paganism--i should be sympathetic, right?)

i think she lost me at the point where eliana, our heroine, left the conservatory and made her way to the refugee camp. i found the times at the conservatory within the bounds of my willing suspension of disbelief, but once we were at the camp, i just didn't believe that this group of people would pick this girl as their leader. so by the end of the book, i didn't care too much what happens next because i'd stopped thinking that this was how this set of events would progress--and yes, i am an experienced reader of fantasy, so it takes a lot to trigger my "oh, come on" reflex.

i guess if the sequel were available at my local library, i might give it a try to see if things get better, but i just searched and it's not. if anyone wants to tell me that things improve greatly, i'd be glad to hear it--i did want to like this book.

[zjakkelien · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very glad this book was recommended to me. I liked the way it was written: reading it was effortless. The characters are nice, and, unusual in fantasy, a lot of them are women. The main character in particular turns out to be someone with common sense. It is clear that she doesn't know everything, but she does know how to use her brain, and she has an idea about how to lead, from being a musician and seeing how orchestras and such are led. I'll admit, I sometimes felt that Eliana's good sense was a bit of a setup: some of the people around her had remarkably little common sense. Particularly the leaders of the 'Redentore' (a religious movement) were too naive. Some of that could be explained from not really knowing what they were doing either, but I think some of it was also from giving Eliana some contrast. It didn't bother me too much, though. Eliana is competent and she achieves her goals. It bothers no-one that she is a woman. Fighting is done by both men and women. So the book has a lot going for it!

Besides that, I also liked the society that Naomi Kritzer has created. The religious beliefs in particularly are interesting: one of the religions clearly has Christian roots, but with a few exceptions: God is female, for instance. In this case it is the Christian religion that is the old religion that was superseded by something new (it is usually Christianity that overtakes an already existing older religion). In fantasy, the Christian-like religion is usually not shown in a positive light, so it is interesting to see that here it is.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kritzer’s debut fantasy is reminiscent of Elizabeth Moon’s stories of Paksennarion, the sheep-farmer’s daughter who became a paladin. Kritzer also offers a tall, ungainly peasant heroine who grows into a warleader during a religious conflict. Eliana, a conservatory scholarship student, dreams of city life after graduation, heedless of the disastrous war and famine affecting those living outside the conservatory walls. When her new roommate recruits several girls into playing music from the Old Religion, Eliana is oblivious of the implications until one of the girls is killed by the Fedeli (the inquisitors of the religion in power) and her roommate is kidnapped to work magic for the Circle of Mages. Eliana flees the conservatory for home, only to discover her village burnt and her family slaughtered. Ending up in a refugee camp, through her clear-sighted logic she becomes the “generale” of the Resistance, uniting the dispossessed in revolt against the Fideli and the Circle. Kritzer’s Mestierese Empire resembles 13th-century Provence, with a religious conflict similar to the Dominican-led extermination of the Cathars. Eliana comes to see the similarities between the beliefs held by followers of the Old Religion and the new, and uses their common plight to unite the oppressed poor of both religions. FIRES OF THE FAITHFUL is a compelling fantasy adventure, a sermon against prejudice, and a hero’s journey in which Eliana comes to understand her world and its people.

[Elizabeth Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this and it had a lot of things I liked, but something kept me from fully committing to it.

First of all, religion is at the core of the story--there are two religions, both of which share themes with Christianity, one of which is being oppressed by the Inquisitional tactics of the other. All of that made me leery that it was going to veer into proselytizing at any moment and while it never did, that wariness distanced me from the story.

I always like a lesbian protagonist and I thought they did a nice job of developing the relationship without at least one of the people in it having any idea what was happening, living in a world where apparently LGBT people are not a common part of the culture. I liked the interweaving of music, magic and the environment, although you're probably already seeing another problem here: we've got at least five major themes going already and I haven't even gotten to the socio-political situation, into which our more-dogged-than-plucky heroine finds herself stumbling and becoming--only slightly implausibly--a rebel leader. That's a lot to pack into a relatively short book and sometimes it bulges out the sides a bit.

Having picked this one up for free, I'm interested enough to buy the sequel and see where the story goes next, but also hoping that the story smooths out a bit as it continues.

[John Loyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fedeli and the Circle control the Mestierese Empire. The Fedeli heading the religion of the Lady, and they vigorously suppress the Old Way. Though the further south, closer to the wastelands there are fewer Fedeli.

Eliana is studying music at a conservatory. The students get very little news about the outside world. They can see Bascio. Of their hometowns they might get a letter once every two months. She builds up a great friendship with her new roommate Mira. When Mira is taken away Eliana leaves the conservatory. She travels home to see how her family is doing. Giula accompanies her as far as Pluma. When Eliana reaches Doratura she finds it uninhabited, burned to the ground and dead bodies beyond recognition all around. Asking at a neighboring village she discovers there were some survivors that were taken to a work camp in the wasteland. She continues south and winds up in that camp.

The writing is intense and gripping. When the Fedeli come to the conservatory the tension is incredible, at any point a slip or betrayal would get someone killed or tortured. Normally religion would be a turn off for me and music kind of blah, but the characters and the writing are so well done that I found myself enjoying the book immensely.

Although this is part one of the story it did not end on a cliffhanger. If you can't find Turning the Storm you won't be cheated.