BooksReviews

WILDFIRE Is a Steady But Slow Burn

Wildfire: The Rise of a Hero (Ashes Over Avalon #1)
Written by Jordan S. Keller
Published by Speaking Volumes
October 3, 2022
Paperback, 296 pgs.

It’s an old story. Girl meets Boy. Boy tries to kill Girl. Girl signs up to train with Boy so they both can generate white-hot blue flame to burn things to the ground….

OK. Maybe it’s not the usual Girl-Meets-Boy story, but Wildfire does have all of the hallmarks of a typical Hallmark Saturday Superhero Movie. Abigail Turner, also known as Inferna, is a flame-powered sidekick to the flame-powered Volcanic. She’s been attached to the hero by the Saves the Day Hero Company to improve his ratings in the city of San Arbor.

Everything’s going well until an attack downtown puts Abigail face-to-face with “The Flame Villain” who almost killed her in an earlier encounter. Haring off to chase him on her own, Abigail ends up wreaking havoc in the same area where she’s supposed to be helping Volcanic, and there are consequences to leaping out on your own — most notably extra property damage and endangerment of civilians.

What follows is a kind of reverse redemption arc, with Abigail finding herself training with “The Flame Villain” to increase the output of her flame abilities, the goal being to get the bad guy to teach her so she can ultimately defeat him. It doesn’t quite work out that way, of course.

The further into training she goes, the more her motivations get confused and out of sync. Add to that a new job with a new hero corporation, and we’re in the middle of a Hallmark-type story where it goes pretty much where you would expect. I guess I could say it’s typical YA fare, except that I haven’t read enough YA to really know for certain. The tropes are here — bad boy villain has more to his story than he lets on, good girl’s mentors have more to their story than they let on, good girl keeps her trysts secret because she worries that she’ll compromise who she is because she’s overwhelmed by her feelings for the bad boy…

Being a sidekick who wants to ultimately be the hero who saves the city, Abigail naturally is looking for any way to increase her powers and improve her skills. But in the process, she faces the dilemma of divided loyalty: is she going to remain true to the principles that got her a new gig with the Knights of the Round Table, complete with extra training from Excalibur, or does she fall into the temptation of losing control and succumbing to the very enemy she’s sworn to defeat?

And while the prose can get a little clunky every now and again, the story plays out pretty evenly with a decent pace. I never got the sense that anything was filler, and I never got bored. A couple of “well, of course” moments, of course.

Now, one minor gripe I have: “the Flame Villain” moniker. It got a bit overused, especially after Abigail learned his actual code name, what he calls himself. Once we were past that, I got a little annoyed every time I saw “Flame Villain” again. There should have been a scene early in the book, wherein the hero community was established to have a database and a process for determining names to use when the actual code name isn’t immediately to hand. It could always be updated once the name is revealed.

I do like the dynamic between Abigail and her hero mentors. Each is different; Volcanic recognizes the ratings boost he gets but doesn’t engage with her much personally, while Excalibur seems to genuinely care about Abigail and her success. Abigail responds to the support and encouragement, to the point where she feels guilty about training with “the Flame Villain” (see?) without telling anyone at work. It creates some tension within Abigail herself. Tension that will likely build in the second book, which I need to pick up somewhere so I can see how this all works out.

Overall, it’s an easy read. The consequences are appropriate to the setting, and Abigail is not an over-powered Mary Sue type of character who’s amazing because of course she’s the best ever.

Will check back when I get the other two under my belt. More to come…

 

 

Jason P. Hunt

Jason P. Hunt (founder/EIC) is the author of the sci-fi novella "The Hero At the End Of His Rope". His short film "Species Felis Dominarus" was a finalist in the Sci Fi Channel's 2007 Exposure competition.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Solve : *
24 ⁄ 12 =


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.