Rating:  -
Forget Bartimaeus. This is not a Bartimaeus novel. This is England, its henges, mounds and burrows, with landmarks left from an earlier age, and the people that live there carry their secrets just as the landscape. This is, at its heart, an Alan Garner novel. In the confines of a small village, a drama is going to be played out, not for the first time, but it may be, with luck, the last time. A dragon sleeps in a mound near the village, sealed in its underneath cave by a 6th century saint. Its dreams change the villagers, in the past, but more rapidly now since the new vicar has unburied - and broken - a strange cross beneath the village church. Will the dragon awaken? Will two boys, with strange new powers inherited from the dragon's dreaming, play a role, either way? I loved the setting, the storyline, the distanced description. It was as if Alan Garner had written a new book, after Red Shift, the Moon of Gomrath or the Owl Service. Thank you, Jonathan Stroud.
Rating:  -
The Buried Fire teaches us a leason of arrogance and power. When Tom Aubrey digs up a Celctic Cross with one arm in the dirt on the Church Ground an evil is awakened. While on the same day Michael MacIntyre had been sleeping on the Wirrim Hill. When woken up everywhere hurts, mostly his eyes. At first he thinks it's Sunstroke and tries to hurry back home, but when he sees a man and woman with sheep heads he thinks he's going mad. Finally when he's in bed and has woken up on the next morning he hits the truth: Something had happened and he can see what people really are.(example: if someone is a tattletail and a rattter he'll see a rat with swirling colors)
His Brother Stephen thinks he is mad so Michael takes him to the exact place where it happened ,Wirrim Hill. So it is on the same day that someone stole the remaining arm of the Celctic cross that Stephen also has the sight. Then as the story goes on Michael and Stephen realize there are 4 powers, sight, fire, flight, and reading minds all of with belong to the dragon. There are also more people with the powers who's identities are revealed and they kidnap Michael.
Then Michael is stuck with a choice, help the others and realese the dragon to avoid the mind live death or help his family to destroy the dragon and all it's evil.
Stroud has again put an amazing plot into literature. It certainly helps with the book that Tom reads so that we understand what that folklorist thought. The others are very evil so it darkens the plot a bit. The end is very arupt. Maybe next time put a couple of more chapters to round it out Stroud.
Still all in all The Buried Fire is a spinning fantasy adventure in which Stroud has put an excelent plot and all fit charecters.
Rating: -
I can see portions of his later works in this earlier one. A good read for all that it's a bit rough. Enjoyed it immensely.
**A book I would also recommend is The Unsuspecting Mage by Brian S. Pratt. This, the first installment of The Morcyth Saga is a great beginning for a new author. Battles, magic, gods, secret passages and intrigue, all the elements of a classic epic fantasy! Any fantasy reader will enjoy it.
Rating:  -
Expected it to have a better ending but was disappointed with the sudden kill to the whole story.
Still prefer the Bartimaeus Trilogy.
Rating: -
This was one of a stack of books I read a few months ago, and it was a bit odd after reading all three Bartimaeus books.
It just wasn't a terribly interesting story. The characters took major calamity in the family with little more than a blink, and the fact that the little brother of the family began exhibiting "evil" tendencies warranted suspicion of drug use.
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