In The Eight, Katherine Neville introduced us to the Montglane Service, a chess set which once belonged to Charlemagne and which holds a deadly secret, and to the dangerous Game with real people as pawns and pieces, played to obtain the chess set and solve its mysteries. Now, in The Fire, we meet Alexandra Solarin, daughter of Cat Velis, heroine of The Eight. Alexandra, a former chess prodigy who saw her father murdered at a tournament in Russia ten years ago, has been forbidden to play chess ever since. She works as an apprentice chef in a Basque restaurant in Washington, D.C.,a job which her favorite uncle, the reclusive cryptographer Ladislaus Nim, has obtained for her. On April 4, 2003, she receives an invitation to her mother's birthday party at the family ranch in Colorado, which she finds strange because her mother has never told anyone except a few people when her birthday is, much less given a birthday party. When she arrives at the ranch, Alexandra finds that her mother has disappeared and a strange assortment of guests have turned up: Alexandra's "aunt" Lily Rad, Cat's best friend from The Eight, who has become a glamorous chess master; Alexandra's own best friend, Nokomis Key; her mother's filthy-rich neighbors Basil and Rosemary Livingston and their obnoxious daughter Sage; their mysterious neighbor Galen March; and the last person Alexandra ever wanted to see: the Ukrainian chess master Vartan Azov, her opponent in that last chess game where her father was killed. Cat has left behind a string of clues, including a chessboard set up with that last game. When Lily deciphers the clues, Alexandra realizes that the Game that killed her father has begun again, and that she herself is in great danger. But who is on her side, and who is working against her? As she searches for her mother, Alexandra is not sure who to trust.
As in The Eight, a historical plot is intertwined with the contemporary plot. In Albania in 1822, Ali Pasha and his supporters are under siege by the sultan's army. He entrusts his adopted daughter Haidee with a dangerous mission: to find her real father, Lord Byron, and give him the Black Queen from the Montglane Service. But before they can find Byron, Haidee and her escort, the Berber boy Kauri, are captured by pirates. Kauri escapes, but Haidee is taken to the sultan's harem in Morocco. In the mountains of Morocco, Charlot de Remy, the son of Mireille, the heroine of The Eight's historical plot, and his guardian Shahin, Kauri's father, try to find Haidee before she is sold into slavery. They succeed, but Charlot discovers that Haidee mysteriously blocks his powers of prophecy. Also, he realizes that there are two Black Queens: the one Haidee was given and the one he thought was safely buried. Which Black Queen is the real one and which the copy? Charlot's and Haidee's quest takes them to Rome and Grenoble, before they can at last solve the mystery of the Montglane Service.
The Fire is a worthy sequel to The Eight. I felt like I was meeting old friends, and I was glad to see Nim, one of my favorite characters from The Eight, play an important role. The new characters are all great additions to the story. The contemporary story receives more attention than the historical one, and it was very clever of Neville to include references to 9-11 and the Iraq War and make them part of the plot. The Montglane Service originated in Baghdad, after all. In The Fire, we learn much more of the history of the Montglane Service as well as its deeper meaning. The Fire did leave me with many questions, however. I hope there will be a third volume in the series.
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