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The Fire Demons

by J. Fitzgerald McCurdy

Can 11-year-old Steele Miller save the world by accessing his ancient alien powers? That’s the question posed by The Fire Demons, the first in the new Mole Wars series from Ottawa author J. Fitzgerald McCurdy.

There is a war going on between two alien races who live beneath New York and Toronto. Steele, an alien, and his two human friends, Mac and Riley, must work with magic-wielding good aliens to defeat evil aliens known as Fire Demons, who are sucking the memories from hundreds of abducted kids.

The book is part traditional science fiction (in the one-page chapter introductions) and part magical fantasy. Unfortunately, the two genres don’t work well together, requiring very different levels of suspension of disbelief. In addition, much of the material in the chapter introductions is either repeated in the text or is a simple outline of Earth’s evolution from an alien perspective. The reader is also asked to believe that the world at large does not react to the mass, mysterious abduction of hundreds of kids or think anything about monsters of fire ripping through Park Avenue and gutting Grand Central Station.

Steele is a reasonably well-drawn character, though he swings wildly from talking like an adult to emoting like a kid and has the annoying habit of forgetting what he was told three pages before. But his friends are barely sketched in, and the bully at the beginning is a clichéd character who acts much older than his age.

There are enough dramatic passages in the book to keep many kids reading, although the scenes of rats eating people and bodies burning will be too strong for some preteens. The excitement of The Fire Demons will draw kids in, but there are many fantasy writers out there (Brian Jacques, William Nicholson, Robin Jarvis) whose books give young readers a much richer experience

 

Reviewer: Q&Q Staff

Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

DETAILS

Price: $24.99

Page Count: 296 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-00-200573-5

Released: Sept.

Issue Date: 2004-11

Categories:

Age Range: 8- 12

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